![]() By the second half, when they've seemingly given up with the adventure and exploration, its mediocrity begins to dominate. Combat’s there in the first half to add more dimension to a very story-led game, but doesn’t really amount to much. Of course the game's final fight is a ludicrously difficult, mad spike, killing you dead in a single hit, and then making you sit through a cutscene and pre-fight each time. Occasionally this is punctuated with a boss fight, nearly all far too easy, just a case of chipping away until they’re over, with little to no imagination required. For the most part you’re hitting rats and spiders, and you can do it barely looking at the screen. That’s a whatever in a scene like this one, but when you’re trying to time jumps between disappearing blocks, with already clumsy platforming, such ambiguity can be infuriating.Ĭombat is similarly average. Is that bit at the bottom a path, or some water? Walk on it to find out. That seemingly brick wall in the middle back is in fact the path out of the scene, and the apparent concealed alleyway to his left is in fact solid wall. Falling in water often means resetting a hefty way on a longer puzzle, but it’s often incredibly ambiguous what is water, let alone whether something is the wall or the floor. ![]() In a manner that might be familiar to those not hypnotised to be incapable of criticism for Hyper Light Drifter, the straight-on view often confuses what’s a path, what’s a wall, what’s a block and what’s a gap. Platforming is, unfortunately, deeply hindered by the chosen perspective. There’s never any mystery to who can best solve what - it’s just a case of putting the square shape in the square hole each time. Charlie, rather tellingly, is entirely superfluous. In the end, it amounts to switching to Chris to climb, Joe to move blocks, and Matt to jump over big gaps. The result of this was probably intended to be a lot more involved than has appeared in the final game. Charlie is, er, the same as Chris but can’t jump. Joe packs a punch, and has extra health, can move heavy objects, but is slow-moving. Matthew can hover above the ground for a bit, because, er, science. Chris is a good all-rounder, and can climb, but has weak health. Each is approached by switching between which of the kids you’re currently controlling, each with their own abilities. Ace.įrom here on in the first half of the game is a mix of vague platforming, a few simple puzzles, and some rudimentary combat. (What I believe those in the know call a “ Phlebotinum”.) A jewel that allows the kids to see… the dead. And on the dead body is… a mystical floating jewel. So tick off every movie ever, and Stand By Me. Matthew’s doing science experiments with his scientist parents, Joe is doing chores for his mom, Charlie is - inevitably - trying to avoid her drunk father in the trailer park in which she lives, and Kevin is at the gang’s tree house in the woods, having discovered - wait for it - a dead body nearby. Things begin with you playing the blue-haired Chris, the unopposed leader of the gang, and your first task is to find the other four members to join you. It’s quite clear that this boilerplate collection is very deliberate, because Crossing Souls is about rejoicing in the nostalgia of those sub-Spielberg/Stephen King movies of impossibly inventive and adventurous kids falling into peculiar tales of mystery and magic. Kevin: Chris’s little brother, always getting in trouble. Matthew: the nerd, thus possessing scientific genius.īig Joe: the fat black kid, who is fat, and the one who is not white.Ĭharlie: the girl, poor, infectiously plucky and just as good as any boy. In Crossing Souls you play as a group of five kids, who are, in order:Ĭhris: the everykid, a generic entry-point. It would very much depend upon how cynical you were feeling. Or you could say: Crossing Souls, a game that grows steadily worse the more you play, immediately beginning by ticking off every tropey 1980s reference one by one, as it introduces its stereotypical gang of kids in a cavalcade of ‘80s movie clichés, grabbing hold of the very tip of Stranger Things’ coattails. Then it goes head-first into nostalgia-poking happy places, a story of kids starting an adventure on the first day of the impossibly long summer holidays. It immediately looks vividly beautiful, a gorgeous splash of pixels and colour, incredibly detailed scenes that would only look less elaborate, less refined, if they were depicted in a more updated graphical style. Crossing Souls gets off to such a great start.
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