Skully {
} 6/10
I originally bought this because it looked like a 3D platformer that would come from the N64-era. Not so much like a Banjo-Kazooie, but more like one of the C-tier platformers of those years, like Glover or something. The game has so far wound up to be just slightly above-average overall though (so, like Glover). Granted that could change since I haven't finished it yet, but I don't think it will since I'm currently at level 11 out of 18. I wouldn't call it one of the worst 3D platformers I've played on Switch, but it is easily one of the ugliest games I've played on Switch. It uses a dynamic resolution to help keep the frame-rate steady, so the resolution dips low at points, and I mean
low. You can expect a lot of your playthrough to be in standard definition, that's for sure. I've looked up gameplay footage of the game on PC and the other consoles, it looks better obviously, but I can't excuse how bad of a job they did with the visuals on Switch. Sometimes they expect you to sacrifice too much quality just to have the benefit of being able to play it portably. And of course there are the players that will always prefer frame-rate over resolution, however the frame-rate still drops in places, so on the Switch it's a lose/lose situation either way.
I took a couple of screenshots to show as examples. I put them in spoiler tags, though there is no actual spoiler contained in them.
Anyway, I've crapped on the graphics enough (they deserved it). Now I'll talk about the rest of the game, starting with how much of a freakin' collect-a-thon it is. Collect-a-thon is a phrase I first heard of when it was used to describe Donkey Kong 64 many years ago, where to get 100% in the game you had to get thousands of collectibles. Well, the same can be said here, if you intend to go for 100% then you should expect to have to hunt down thousands of collectibles, 5,500 to be precise, with hundreds per level (the first level had 200, third level had 400+ fifth level had 500 etc.) they just went overboard with this crap, and from what I can tell you'll only be rewarded with concept art and to me that just isn't worth it (does
anyone here look at concept art once you unlock it in a game?)
You don't spend the entire game rolling around as the skull, but you will spend a lot of the game doing that. The skull is made of clay, so you cannot get wet or that equals death, but thankfully checkpoints are plentiful. There will be certain sections of each level where you will have the ability to transform into a...creature (idk what it is). I guess they are made of clay too, because they will also die if they get wet long enough, but there are three different ones you will get to change into during your journey and each one has different abilities. One has the ability to punch over certain rocks to make a bridge, aother has the ability to run fast and the ability to move rocks to form platforms that make it easy for you to jump across bodies of water or lava. The third has the ability to levitate rocks and to double-jump to reach higher areas. There are certain puzzles where you will need to switch between all three and utilize each of their abilities but it is made tedious by the fact that once you exit the creature, as the skull you must roll back to the checkpoint area to spawn the next creature.
The controls overall for the most part work fine, and I haven't had too many issues with the camera, except for a few spots where the camera was locked behind you or in front of you in an auto-scroll/chase sequence level and it would sometimes be difficult to keep track of the little skull or to judge the correct distance you need to jump to the next platforms. As for the game's story, the cutscenes have minimal animation in them (which again makes it feel like a N64 game) but the voice acting isn't bad. Underneath some of the game's issues I feel there lies a semi-decent game in all of this, I just wish I hadn't settled for the ugliest version of it when I had better options (PS4 or PC, which the game is currently on sale on each of those platforms for $3).
Yesterday I ended up buying a half dozen more PSVR2 games in the current PSN sale and I really want to play them, but I worry if I stop playing this game to start up one of those, I won't want to return to this one after, so I'm going to try and stick with it and finish the second half of the game and then move on.
Edit: I ran into a glitch that doesn't let me progress on Level 14. It sucks this had to happen when I only had 3 or 4 levels to go, but I'm giving up on this game now. I'd lower the score even further now but I don't think it affects everyone.