Most of my game purchase decisions are based on what is on sale at dramatic discounts during the sales that the Playstation store has on a regular basis. This has been the case in almost every situation except in very rare occasions such as with games made by Square-Enix which I have lost all faith in during recent years and I will not get duped by after that atrocity that was the Final Fantasy 7 remake.
Recently, I was looking at the section of games that were available in the less than 400 Baht (I live overseas) section and a platformer named Furwind was in there for less than $3 US.
I'm gonna be honest right out of the gate and say that this game is not great. In today's gaming environment it takes a lot to stand out from the pack and the fact that this game had to be in the bargain bin for me to even notice it says a lot about its potential quality. It is not unique in any way whatsoever nor are the graphics and sound anything to get excited about in the slightest. However, it is a magnificent throwback to when games were a lot more simplistic than they are now.
Furwind is exactly the same as a LOT of other platformers out there in that well, you platform and your ability to make it through the various levels depend on pinpoint accuracy and timing as you make your way from left to right in order to get to a final objective which thankfully is no a castle with a flagpole attached to it that you have to jump as high on as you possibly can.
There is some degree of level selection that can be done but honestly I am not really even sure why they included this part in the game because you can't even progress to certain parts of the map until you have completed other ones so the only purpose any of this serves is if you wanted to repeat a level for some reason that I have not yet discovered.
All my greivences aside, this game is actually quite good if you appreciate how simplistic and fun games used to be something like 30 years ago.
You do develop additional skills as you progress but really the only thing you ever really do is jump around and swing your tail at stuff in order to kill it in a similar fashion to when you would get the raccoon tail in Super Mario 3. You can take multiple hits in certain places but mostly it is simply all about not falling to the void below and almost every level has a "void below" that results in immediate termination.
There are a total of, I dunno, like 20 total screens and 3 bosses as far as I can tell and for me at least, this game has been a great little casual time waster that only involves a few buttons, pattern memorization, and at times a great deal of patience and desire to repeat the same level again and again.
It probably sounds like I am being nasty about it
This game is super cheap and when I spent my three whole dollars on it I honestly wasn't expecting much. In the end I think that if you ever did enjoy Mario, Rayman, or any of a wide array of other titles that kind of all fit into the same category it really could be a decent addition to your library of games that aren't going to chew up your hard drive on your PS4 and you can refer back to on a regular basis for a laugh.
There is exactly zero innovation in this game and for me at least that is part of the reason why I enjoy it so much. I can play this game after having 15 lagers at the local pub and still enjoy it. I can also walk away from it for a month and then return and probably actually be better at it than i was when I was playing it for 4 hours in a row when I first bought it.
This game is casual gaming at its very core - the likes of which doesn't exist with many games these days.
If you are looking for a game that you can refer back to every now and then and gradually complete it over the course of 3 months and when you return be like "oh, so that button jumps and the other one swings the tail" and have that basically be all there is to the game.... then this game might be for you.
The fact that it costs about as much as my first round at the pub tonight cost is just an excellent added bonus.
The bosses (the two that I have faced thus far anyway) are whimsical and fun and pose just the right amount of challenge without encouraging you to ever throw your controller that costs 10 times as much as the game across the room is just an added bonus.
I think if you have a few bucks lying around and enjoy returning to your gaming roots every now and then that Furwind might not be a terrible choice to make for your library.