Overview: Aquaria is an exploration (and probably eventually a shooter) game.
Recommendation:
Without getting into too much detail, I found the pace of Aquaria to be aggravatingly slow. I also disliked the character's movements, whether its swimming, grabbing hold of a wall, or sprinting. Had the game been more of a shooter from the start (the game gives you a preview of what might be via a hallucination/vision), I might have been more interested.
In general, this game has gotten positive reviews, but as a person who enjoys action games, I would not recommend it. As far as atmospheric, exploration games are concerned, I'd recommend Dear Esther (PC) (2012).
[20150130]
20140420:
While the start of this game seemed promising (interesting narration and story), I played for a little over forty-five minutes only to unlock two abilities: a shield and an ability to lift heavy objects.
Throwing the game a bone, perhaps it simply took me longer than the average player to find where I was suppose to be going. In my defense, the game does a horrible job of suggesting where I should be going. For example, a tooltip appears which says the white circles on the map represent new areas. What the tooltip doesn't say is that most of these white areas are actually inaccessible.
Tip: You'll see plants spread throughout Aquaria which have these colored bulbs. Continuously sing a note of the same color to get an item from within the plant. Some items can later be combined using recipes found throughout the game.
Unfortunately, I found the exploration experience dull and was hoping the game would have jumped right into the cool shooting experience. At one point I ran into this mysterious woman and temporarily played as a character who shoots projectiles. Unfortunately this experience is short and ends in death.
Curious as to whether or not I was alone in this opinion, I headed over to metacritic.com to read some other reviews. To my surprise, the game had mostly positive reviews and I was beginning to feel awkward for judging the game so poorly. There were, however, three reviews on which also thought the game was boring and suffered from poor game design.
[20140420]
20150130:
Unfortunately, the screenshots I took during my first time playing the game got messed up (though I've had a similar situation happen to other games as well). As such, I went back into the game to take some more and I can verify that my experience this time was just as boring as the last.
I only went as far as getting a single power, running into the mysterious woman, and going a bit to the left of that before throwing in the towel as the game made me sleepy. Well, technically I was already tired from working late last night and just recently had some wine, but I'm sure there are plenty of games that would have kept me up and going until I dropped dead cold with my face on the keyboard. In contrast, I was very quick to end my experience with Aquaria.
Aquaria (PC) (2007)
Relevant Links:
Aquaria Webpage
Awuaria (video game) (Wikipedia.org)
Aquaria (Steam Store Page)
Recommendation:
Without getting into too much detail, I found the pace of Aquaria to be aggravatingly slow. I also disliked the character's movements, whether its swimming, grabbing hold of a wall, or sprinting. Had the game been more of a shooter from the start (the game gives you a preview of what might be via a hallucination/vision), I might have been more interested.
In general, this game has gotten positive reviews, but as a person who enjoys action games, I would not recommend it. As far as atmospheric, exploration games are concerned, I'd recommend Dear Esther (PC) (2012).
[20150130]
20140420:
While the start of this game seemed promising (interesting narration and story), I played for a little over forty-five minutes only to unlock two abilities: a shield and an ability to lift heavy objects.
Throwing the game a bone, perhaps it simply took me longer than the average player to find where I was suppose to be going. In my defense, the game does a horrible job of suggesting where I should be going. For example, a tooltip appears which says the white circles on the map represent new areas. What the tooltip doesn't say is that most of these white areas are actually inaccessible.
Tip: You'll see plants spread throughout Aquaria which have these colored bulbs. Continuously sing a note of the same color to get an item from within the plant. Some items can later be combined using recipes found throughout the game.
Unfortunately, I found the exploration experience dull and was hoping the game would have jumped right into the cool shooting experience. At one point I ran into this mysterious woman and temporarily played as a character who shoots projectiles. Unfortunately this experience is short and ends in death.
Curious as to whether or not I was alone in this opinion, I headed over to metacritic.com to read some other reviews. To my surprise, the game had mostly positive reviews and I was beginning to feel awkward for judging the game so poorly. There were, however, three reviews on which also thought the game was boring and suffered from poor game design.
[20140420]
20150130:
Unfortunately, the screenshots I took during my first time playing the game got messed up (though I've had a similar situation happen to other games as well). As such, I went back into the game to take some more and I can verify that my experience this time was just as boring as the last.
I only went as far as getting a single power, running into the mysterious woman, and going a bit to the left of that before throwing in the towel as the game made me sleepy. Well, technically I was already tired from working late last night and just recently had some wine, but I'm sure there are plenty of games that would have kept me up and going until I dropped dead cold with my face on the keyboard. In contrast, I was very quick to end my experience with Aquaria.
Aquaria (PC) (2007)
Relevant Links:
Aquaria Webpage
Awuaria (video game) (Wikipedia.org)
Aquaria (Steam Store Page)
Date/Time
Saturday, April 19, 2014
@
22:30
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