Aaru's Awakening (that's pronounced 'er-ooh' for anyone curious) is the latest indie to launch on PlayStation as a free PlayStation Plus game, and just to be clear, it loves putting its artsy attitude front and centre. Don't get us wrong, we were entertained, if not occasionally peeved, by the challenging run and jump gameplay – but the real star here is the world that developer Lumenox Games has crafted. Hand-drawn visuals and an ambient, simplistic soundtrack are no doubt the main attraction.
The planet Lumenox is overseen by four deities: Dawn, Day, Dusk, and Night. At first they all work together, ensuring that the world goes through its proper cycles – but as time goes by, Night's greed causes him to extend his control and expand his power. Dawn, in an effort to restore the balance and bring Lumenox back to its original state, releases Aaru: a hulking half-bird, half-bear creature with the ability to teleport from one place to the next.
Despite his abnormally large frame and extraordinary capabilities, Dawn's champion is rather frail; everything from Day's rays of sunlight to Dusk's waterfalls are quick to bring him to an untimely end. His only defenses, a dash move and the aforementioned ability to teleport, are just that – defenses. Aaru isn't focused on obliterating his enemies so much as he is on surviving, which is a bit ironic, seeing as he's on a seek and destroy mission.
It starts out simple: you run to the right, jump over obstacles, and use your dash to break down barriers. But things get a bit more challenging once teleportation is thrown into the mix; Aaru must use his power to solve puzzles and get past obstacles.
Even if there's more than a fair amount of puzzles to be solved, Aaru's Awakening is more of an action platformer than a puzzler. Quick reflexes and a mastery of the game's controls and mechanics are a must if you ever want to go toe-to-toe with Night. Unfortunately, while there's nothing wrong with a difficult, formidable jump-'em-up, there is something wrong with one that plays awkwardly.
Aaru himself moves smoothly, but using his special ability is almost always a hassle. Ideally, teleporting should be easy, but since this is such a fast-paced game – and making precise shots is something that takes time – it's not unusual to misfire and wind up dead. It's tragic that teleporting is the only way to take down foes, too, as it really does drag out something that should be a simple task. Not making the quick and easy dash a form of attack is a questionable move on the developer's part.
There's still some redemption in the fact that the puzzles themselves are clever without being infuriatingly mind-bending, but it didn't take long for us to grow tired of Aaru's antics.
Unexpectedly, the best part of the game is its presentation. Everything has been drawn by hand in a style that's reminiscent of animation from the '70s and early '80s. It's a style that the artists have fully embraced, as everything looks like it would fit right in with a fond-to-the-heart childhood film. When we weren't throwing our controllers out of frustration, we were admiring the beautifully crafted landscape, or the precise details in the game's enemy designs. This lovely artwork is accompanied by a great set of atmospheric tunes to boot.
Conclusion
There are already a ton of platformers to choose from on both of Sony's current home consoles, but the good news is that Aaru's Awakening is free to anyone with PlayStation Plus for the time being. If you fancy something artsy and with some challenging gameplay, then we think that you should consider giving it a shot. Everyone else will want to pass on this one.
Comments 9
A really bad and disappointing game for me, I love platformers but Aaru's is bad...
One of the few games I gave up on, and rather quickly too. Just too frustrating. Velocity did teleporting far better.
I think that after about 700 words I've said my piece, but I really don't understand all the hate people have for this game (not in the comments here, but just based on what I've seen on other sites).
Like someone gave it a 3/10. Really?
Is it challenging? Yeah, definitely. Is that challenge always fair? Not necessarily. But it's still a fun enough game, especially considering that it was free this month.
I would have to agree with the majority here. I gave it a good go but the controls felt very awkward and each death didn't feel fair because them. Controls can often make or break a game and I feel this is one of those situations where they have impacted the game for the worse.
I only gave it 20min, but that was enough for me to delete it.
@ryanorly I'd argue that being "fun enough" just won't cut it nowadays. We're a bit spoilt in that most games we see released on ps4 are- by any other generations' standard- excellent.
We have Rogue Legacy, Shovel Knight, Axiom Verge, Never Alone, The Swapper, From Dust.... There are hundreds of games in the same genre. This means that anything that is good but not great will struggle.
The cynic in me believes that this is why sony churn them out on plus. They won't sell, so the devs effectively sell their soul for exposure.
@Johnnycide I see your point. Granted, there are a lot better games out there. But I'm not sure I agree about the Plus bit — some more variety would be nice, but there have definitely been some extraordinary titles to come out of it. Just off the top of my head, I'm thinking of Apotheon.
@ryanorly I actually think Apotheon is a good example. A game with unsatisfying combat and sometimes obtuse gameplay. I did play it for a couple of hours or so, but found that everything looked a little similar, and the art style- while certainly unique- didn't help when dealing with several enemies at once.
That, to me, is a game that's going to be a tough sell. Your average gamer isn't going to pick it up because it looks like a history lesson, not a game. It had some great ideas and I definitely mean to give it more attention, but it was never going to sell well. It's tough to promote, and risked losing money for the devs. Sony comes along and instantly they have over a million potential gamers, and presumably at least break even.
@ryanorly
My issue was the extensive slog through story sequences. I get called pretentious and arrogant on a regular basis (so, people see me as both superior and are angry about it, apparently), but even I found the story to be pretentiously overly-arty to the point that my eyes glazed over and I just shut it off.
I tend to actually enjoy quirky and very arty games, but the bizarre anthropomorphized "day-dusk-night-dawn" cycles "fighting" each other was just incredibly dull and so abstract as to come off as annoying. Almost like the developer was trying too hard to come up with something creative and melodramatic and they only way they could have stacked the achingly brooding melodrama higher would be to have Billy Corgan narrate it sadly into a tissue.
The story sequences went on forever and simply refused to be interesting. By the time I got to the gameplay, I felt it was interesting, but not exactly fun. There were some good ideas, but I didn't feel the implementation was very solid and in a day and age where platformers have reached the heights of addictive perfection a la Rayman Legends, this just felt bland.
I really like to give indies a shot and the benefit of the doubt, but just couldn't get past this one. There was an overwhelming impression of "trying too hard" yet an unrefined element to the whole thing, and the pretentious packaging didn't help things. It's a freebie, so everyone should give it a try, but it's just overly front-loaded with "LOOK AT ALL THIS ART" to the detriment of pretty much everything else.
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