Nah,
I wanted to finish the game in order to make an actual final review about it, been working on it for God knows how long, but this had always been a game I had to restart multiple times, because I would, inevitably, abandon it, after a while.
Now, there are problems with this game, and good aspects that I like; the graphics and visuals, art style, aesthetic, use of colours andNah,
I wanted to finish the game in order to make an actual final review about it, been working on it for God knows how long, but this had always been a game I had to restart multiple times, because I would, inevitably, abandon it, after a while.
Now, there are problems with this game, and good aspects that I like; the graphics and visuals, art style, aesthetic, use of colours and lighting; all of that is top notch here, it might be the biggest strength the game has, as a matter of fact!
But the gameplay is where problems started for me, and after a while, in any game -and I know I’m not alone in this-, graphics start becoming secondary and gameplay starts reigning as the predominant factor that goes in my enjoyment of a gaming experience.
This game has fairly straightforward levels, if you truly look at their design, most of the complexity comes from the smart ways the game gives you the illusion that the levels are much more complicated and cryptically designed than they actually are. The game uses multiple tools for this: portals, doors, shortcuts, a number of backtracking tools and graphical tools to provide you with the idea that the game’s levels are fairly complex. Now this is all well and good for me, and it was until the last couple of areas or so.
The game is composed of seven different areas, with the last one only unlocking after beating the other six, the game also has four difficulty modes (one that happens to be a secret) and the selection of these, even references Quake beautifully, this is also enhanced by the fact the game doesn’t punish you for playing on easier settings by locking you out of achievements or even locking your save progress to an specific difficulty, which is a really good thing! This allowed me to experiment with the difficulty of the game, switching back and forward whenever I pleased in order to actually attempt to get an idea of the general balancing of the game.
For the most part, however, these areas are fairly different in their concept, enemy design, and aesthetic, which is pretty cool, with the last area being the strangest one of them all, and a complete psychedelic experience at times, the issue? This last area is also the one where you can tell the developers wanted to go out with a “bang” they attempted to make their most elaborate and complex level design and it shows because… It’s not good… All of the different tools that were used in previous levels in order to give the player the illusion of complexity are used in these levels as well, but with the added difference that the design is actually more cryptic now, there’s a ton of backtracking and a number of ways the colour grading changes and alters as you progress through the levels of this particular area, after a while this became increasingly more annoying rather than enticing or filled with wonder; I wasn’t surprised or happy about how pretty the game looked as much as I was annoyed, and this got complemented, negatively, by the second issue I had with the game’s design.
The difficulty…
Amid Evil is a highly difficult game, and an incredibly unbalanced game at that, now I’m a firm believer that if a developer wants to make their game extremely difficult, that’s fine, in those cases the game usually is not for me, but the issue with this specific title is that is one of the many that adds difficulty settings that aren’t well implemented, In my first review I actually complained about this aspect and the developers addressed it, but at this stage in development the game was still in early access, so this means the early areas were corrected, but the subsequent stages weren’t… Something I didn’t know after updating my review to a positive rating, but also something that I now know after reaching the last area of the game.
As such the only choice for someone like me that wants to play the game on an easier setting was to resort to using cheats, something that the game also offers, akin to older, more retro first-person shooter games; now this is okay as an option but it doesn’t invalidate the problem. The fact is, Amid Evil has very poor balancing of difficulty.
For someone like me, after noticing all of the different positive qualities that Amid Evil had, in the end I noticed it wasn’t really a game for me, it’s clear that people don’t mind about the harsh challenge that the game offers, as much as they don’t care about the complexity of the later levels, this latter point is clear to me to a degree, given that only 14.9% of the players have even finish the actual last area of the game… But as someone that truly wants to finish the games I purchase, Amid Evil left me feeling a bit… Left out? In a way…… Expand
AMID EVILYour Score0 out of 10User Score
