Game Stop. You know them, you hate them, you despise them. You probably shop there all the time. Lately they've been kind of getting a little bit scared of the whole brick and mortar video game retail store business and they've been looking at other ways to expand their gigantic video game operation. And you know what they decided to do? They decided to make their own video game. This is Song of the Deep.
Song of the Deep is all about a little girl named Merryn whose father is lost at sea. And instead of calling the police or the naval authority she decides to build a submarine. In a shanty out of spare parts. And luckily when she puts it in the water it doesn't kill her and she doesn't drown. It actually does work and she submerges and the entire adventure of her going down to find her father begins. There's some stuff going on in the world with some ancient civilizations under water and some old technology and relics and all this other stuff all over the place but the central focus here is that you're trying to find your dad and that's the whole plot of the game. Now right up front this game looks like a Metroidvania style game and you know what, it sort of is. In fact the official wikipedia page for this game calls it a Metroidvania style game but if any of you are out there, change that. This is sort of a Metroidvania style game but it has more in common with Blaster Master which everybody seems to forget. See this isn't a guy or a girl running around trying to kill vampires or hunt metroids. This is a game about a girl in a vehicle which is kind of what Blaster Masters like. In fact you can get out of the vehicle in the game just like in Blaster Master. So this is a Blaster Master style game. I guess we can't say that because how many people out there actually remember Blaster Master?
But anyway this game basically has those metroid kind of styles where you're going all the way in one direction and then there's a wall you can't pass or a door you can't open and you have to go all the way back, find something that will help you and go all the way forward again. A whole lot of traversal all over the world. It's all underwater, it looks beautiful and it has a lot of very interesting gameplay mechanics. But the one thing of the gameplay that I'm really not a fan of is essentially its heavy use of physics. There's a lot of video games out there that utilize physics engines to do really cool visual things like leaves flowing through the wind or maybe some dead body's rag doll animation. Which always looks hilariously unrealistic. But honestly this game didn't really do that. What it chose to do is use the physics implementation for its core gameplay features. For instance you can use a grappling hook in this game to pick up objects and throw them at your enemies which works sometimes. But what the game ends up doing is utilizing all of these weird enemy spawn placements that just come out of the walls for no reason at all and it becomes incredibly busy and hectic and you really can't focus on grabbing things. You just end up using your grappling hook as a weapon as best as you can even though it's really not the best weapon to use in those specific instances. It really does suck. And the other thing I really didn't like in the game was that there were certain puzzles that utilized physics that just seemed to be a little bit messy. They utilize areas of this world where you've got ocean currents that are pushing your sub out of the way of certain events in areas like that and while it does seem to work sometimes I always felt that it just wasn't working well enough. The entire game play experience revolves around physics based attacks and physics based puzzles and if you don't enjoy it at the beginning you're not going to enjoy it later in the game.
The visuals of this game have a pretty cool cartoon aesthetic that don't look super realistic but don't look all that fake either which I'm kind of okay with. I don't mind the way they designed everything and in fact a lot of the enemy models and the textures and the designs kind of look really cool. I got lost in the world at points and it just felt really fun to be exploring this whole weird underwater universe that they were trying to lay out for you. But unfortunately not everything about the visual design works. At least that's how I feel because there was more than one moment that I got lost in this world because visually they didn't set up a way for me to know which path I should be going to. Most Metroid games, or Metroidvania games in general, have a very clear design of where you should be going. But this one really doesn't. I got lost more than once and I feel that was because of the way they designed the game in general. It's a really big open world with a lot of places to explore but they don't really direct you into any one way that well. During my first two hours of gameplay I didn't really see any interesting story developments. It kind of just stayed pretty bare bones which was really unfortunate. I didn't really have any push narratively to keep going. But what did keep me going was the whole concept that I was going to get new weapons and items as I was playing along and that was really cool. That's the kind of stuff that Metroidvania games are really good at, the whole upgrading your character and getting more things. That's kind of what these games are good at and this one is no different. And I know that even though I'm not a big fan of the physics gameplay myself there's going to be a bunch of people out there that are going to just be totally okay with it. If you can look past those physics things you're probably looking at a pretty decent Castlevania Metroid clone that is just fun to play and easy to get into without a lot of difficulty. Now keep in mind I was playing it on the intermediate difficulty setting and not super easy because I wanted a bit of a challenge so there are options there for people that want something a little bit more difficult or a little bit easier.
The whole reason I wanted to play this game was because it's a title being produced by the folks at Game Stop. Now obviously they did a really smart move by going out and getting Insomniac Games to actually develop the game which I think saved their butts. But at the end of the day this doesn't feel like a big first party game. I'd expect a team of like 10 or 20 people to make a game like this and not a big company like Game Stop or Insomniac so it's kind of strange the way that this game feels. It's got everything going for it the way it's designed but it does feel like an independent game and not a big game which is weird. I don't know what I was expecting getting into this but I was kind of expecting a little bit more than what it delivered. It does have a lot of game play and a big world to explore but it doesn't feel like a really gigantic experience. Maybe I'm getting spoiled by playing Shadow Complex and other games like that but this one just kinda feels basic. Bare bones if you will. Nothing really amazing, nothing really bad. It doesn't feel like something that I would recommend people rush out and buy but it also doesn't feel like a game I'd recommend you avoid either. It's kind of just in the middle. So if you're looking for a game that plays in the middle maybe you might want to play this.
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