WHATEVER
The game seems promising (in the fun department, at least). But it fails to live up even them minimum expectation.
So my laptop is, well, office-work oriented. Unlike gaming PC that comes with top-notch dedicated graphic card, mine only relying on Intel-integrated graphic. Yes, it’s way too far from the minimum requirement of the game. This part is all on me if I can’t run the game.
However, I can run many big-name 3D games smoothly to some extent (sacrifice rendering details – which is OK for me, game should be playable first, beautiful second). Catherine (2011), XCOM (2012), Life is Strange (2015), Sea of Thieves (2018), Untitled Goose Game (2019), Outer Wilds (2019), or even Tetris Effect (2021) to name a few. So why this game required so much yet giving back so little?
Now consider this: playing the game on an under-qualified device result in an unwinnable situation. If you can’t get your game to 60fps, then you’re doom. Why? Because the game rely on real-world clock tick, not in-game frame count. So any action you’ve send now will be buffered between frames, then shown the accumulated effect at the next frame it get rendered. And that’s mean you’re gonna overshooting or undershooting a lot since your actions are not reflected instantly… Well, it might not be a problem for a newtype who remembers all the sequence and can plays it blindfolded. But isn’t we all a normal person?
Honesty, since I was born in the Flash era – I think I’m super tolerance on this, I’m happy to run ANY game in a slowmo mode at 12fps if the game is being fair to me by calculating action per frame, not per tick. That way I can have fun and complete it. Yes, I’m aware of being a cheater. But hey, it’s a single player game. I’m having fun. And I’m willing to replay the game again at the recommended-fps, like a couple years later when the technology is more affordable.
All that aside, I borrow my friend a gaming computer to run it at 60fps. And the game is still … unfun.
First, it’s so frustrating to maneuver the ship! Like, that’s not how the ship operated IRL. Not even for a modern propeller ship. The physics of sailing is just plain wrong. You see, all of the ships in the world has the one and only common shape (which also shared with fish): a long narrow hull from head to tail, which determine the direction for moving forward. Why? Because water has resistance to moving object, which is proportional to the area of contact. Thus the resistance along the sideways is much greater than the head of the ship. And if there are forces apply along the sideways, it just a vector decomposition to propel ship forward. Ships don’t drift sideways like cars do!
Next is the fixed-angle bird-eye-view camera. I would say that this is a very bad decision to implement a racing game since: (1) it confuses player which side is left or right when the vehicle turn around and faced toward the player; (2) we can’t see what’s on the far side of the vehicle easily since the vehicle itself block the visibility; and (3) we often biasedly acted on one side over another, like making a left turn way more early than a right turn, when in reality both side should require the same amount of effort. All of them are bad aspects. Evidently, almost all racing games place a camera to the back of the vehicle, or on the driver’s seat. Yes, there are some few games does implement a fixed-angle bird-eye-view camera. One that comes to my mind is a game on iPad which I played like a decade ago. Which, to be fair, is OK since it is a casual game that asks me to swipe left or right to steering only, the front of the car is facing only one way, nobody confusing with this design. However, there is another game with the same frustration with this game (only slightly less), that is a mini game that let you control a remote controlled car from the ring side in Super Mario Odyssey (2017). When the car faced forward me, I get confuse sometimes when I want to steer the car to the right, but fail to reverse the analogue direction. In that game, it’s a little bit acceptable, since I can physically flip my joy-con when controlling. But not this game which is on PC.
Combining with miscellaneous things like the race-car level design that feature lots of sharp turn (not an open sea with floating buoy or even a somewhat narrow but straight canal). The tight ticking clock that allows too few margin of errors. It’s just ruin the fun of the game.
Games can be meme, I get it. And this game suppose to be a funny meme. But why make it so hard, so challenge, so inaccessible that there’s no laughing for fun but only fills with curse words?
Huh, whatever.
Originally published on: Steam
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