NGN:
As Triple-A budget games become more and more expensive to produce with each passing year, they must seek to appeal to an increasingly general audience. A common criticism concerning this mainstream focus is the dearth of difficulty; on any given forum, you can surely find a veteran wistfully lecturing “youngsters” about when “games used to be hard.” Almost seemingly in direct response to these concerns, there has been a rise in the independent games market of “masocore” titles: games designed with extreme challenge in mind, harking back to the unforgiving cartridges of yore. Lumenox Games’ debut effort, Aaru’s Awakening, is one of these brutally challenging independent titles; unfortunately, its design doesn’t offer the precision it demands from its players.
This week’s Famitsu review scores are in, and Super Mario Maker was awarded high marks.
Super Mario Maker (Wii U, Nintendo): 9 / 9 / 9 / 10 - (37/40)
Super Exploding Zoo (PS4/PS Vita, Honeyslug Ltd): 6 / 7 / 6 / 7 - (26/40)
Aaru's Awakening (PS4/PS3, Lumenox ehf): 7 / 7 / 8 / 7 - (29/40)
Element4l (PS Vita, Unity Games Japan): 8 / 8 / 8 / 6 - (30/40)
Baboon! (PS Vita, Flyhigh Works): 7 / 7 / 6 / 6 - (26/40)
Chronus Arc (3DS, Kemco): 7 / 7 / 8 / 7 - (29/40)
Tatakae Buta-San (3DS, Mechanic Arm): 7 / 6 / 7 / 7 - (27/40)
Shippuu no Usagi-Maru: Nazo no Karakuri Shiro (3DS, Arc System Works): 7 / 8 / 7 / 6 - (28/40)
Monokage Quest (3DS, Poisoft): 8 / 6 / 8 / 7 - (29/40)
Deaitama (3DS, Starsign): 6 / 6 / 7 / 6 - (25/40)
Thanks!
Yeah, I think everyone's converging on a solid 9 at this point. Jeremy Parish (at USGamer), who seems to share a lot of my sensibilities in gaming, gave it a 10, so I'm pretty psyched.
Glad to hear it. I knew this game was going to be great, and I can't wait to finally play it.
Clipping Error take a look at Aaru's Awakening. They go through how the game feels to play, beat the first boss, and give a recommendation based on what they've experienced in their time with it.
Aaru's Awakening is a hand-drawn, 2D action platformer, developed by Lumenox Games. The game puts the player in control of Aaru, a mythical creature with two unique abilities; teleportation and charging. You must use these abilities as you travel through the dangerous world of Lumenox to defeat an evil entity, facing many obstacles and enemies along the way.
"The aim of the game is to travel through each level as quickly as possible to either receive a bronze, silver, or gold medal. Sounds simple, right? Wrong. As I stated earlier, the game is unnecessarily difficult, with low target times, making it really hard to achieve a gold, or even silver medal. This combined with the difficult control system, it's hard not to find the game really frustrating and just want to give up. I've spent quite a lot of time on the game, trying to understand the system and get to grips, but I'm finding it very difficult to achieve anything more than a bronze medal on most levels. The level isn't simply just to run from one end to the other as fast as possible, there are many obstacles and enemies in the way, with a few checkpoints spread throughout. Dying comes thick and fast in the game, even touching enemies and falling in to pools of lava, it's far too easy to die. To achieve gold medals, you're going to have to have a whole lot of luck, or be greatly skilled."
Translation: It's too hard. 4/10
