Hyper Light Drifter · 1:41am Sep 12th, 2016
Hyper Light Drifter is one of those perfect-difficulty games that I adore and experience far too little of in my life. Games usually fall on either side of the spectrum: so easy that I get bored and I cruise through it as if in a waking dream, not really paying any attention to it at all, or it's NES-hard and I want to break my controller in half and burn it at the stake as an offering to satisfy the burning God-rage I hold deep within. I tend to avoid competitive multiplayer games for that latter reason. I'm not the type to hate a game because I'm playing against people that have eighty hours plus on me in it, then come back to it the next day for more metaphorical self-flagellation. Games are meant to be fun, not feel like a chore.
The game's difficulty is heavily based around situational awareness, personal skill and precision. Unfortunately, that personal skill aspect means that 'perfect difficulty' is entirely subjective. Fortunately, if you love more fast-paced games, this game feels really good to play, though I will immediately say that you want a controller. After playing through it with a 360 controller, I cannot imagine trying to play it with a keyboard. That sounds like a nightmare scenario that only the most desperate would ever throw themselves into.
The game kicks off pretty hardcore, and as a quick aside, this game has amazing soundwork and it will get extremely loud at times. Regardless of that, you need to be able to hear everything that's going on in the game, as the sound cues can tell you what the enemy's going to do, and indicate secrets and possibly snippets of what's really going on. The story isn't told through text or vocals, everything is told through imagery. The intro cutscene is rife with it, and so is the entire game.
If you want to see the intro cutscene, click here.
If you watched the video I linked, then you can immediately get an idea of what the sound design for this game is like. I can't put my finger on exactly what it reminds me of, but it brings to mind a kind of nineties techno or ambient wave, and every bit of music in the game brings this kind of soothing ambience to it...save for the boss fights. Even then, the music never gets this kind of punchy intensity or orchestral glory you usually find these days. It's low-key and just a bit faster than normal. It sets an entirely different kind of mood than what you'd experience in, say, Bloodborne or Ninja Gaiden, both games that also have a very character-action gameplay style to them. It's kinda what I'd expect Vinyl Scratch to make if she were commissioned to make a soundtrack for a videogame of this sort.
After that intro cutscene, your character, simply known as a drifter, wakes up as if the whole thing was just a dream. Without giving anything away, let's just say the intro cutscene was very...prophetic, and telling, though exactly what it was telling you about, even I can't say. There's a lot to find, and apparently there's an actual codex you can use outside of the game to translate certain in-game text that only appears as an ancient language on these monoliths you can find all over the place, sixteen in total, but I certainly haven't gone that far. I might now that I've thoroughly beaten the game. If nothing else, I'd love to know what the fuck's going on.
After that, you get right into the game's tutorial section. You have your dash ability, which is snappy and quick, you have your fancy lightsaber sword thingy, and you have some medkits. Everything you need to carve a path forward. Through the tutorial, you also wind up with a gun that you can use, and the gameplay favors a mutual use of melee and ranged attacks as you progress through the game. There is no reloading of the gun or buying ammunition. Rather, you regain energy the gun can use for ammunition by attacking enemies with your sword, or by using a specific dashing technique that you can get later.
Then, just after completing the tutorial, as you make your way towards the only real city in the game, the same black monstrosity from the intro cutscene appears, your character coughs up more strangely-colored blood, and he passes out. This won't be the last time you see this entity either, though what it is and what its purpose is in the story can be left up to interpretation. Oddly enough, through those cards you get on Steam from playing games for a certain amount of time, I've found out that that entity is called Judgement. The text on it reads 'Ever-present, always watching, inevitable.'
If it isn't obvious, your character is sick with something. What he's sick with is never really touched upon, but you're definitely not the only one afflicted with it. While there aren't any normal NPCs you run across that seem to have this disease, there's another drifter wearing pink armor that also seems to suffer from it. On top of that, the blood you have behaves strangely. Moments after spilling on the floor, it will disappear into thin air in a show of light beams and electricity. He even states that he's seen the Anubis-looking dog in his dreams as well, and he was apparently led to the same places you were by it.
You will run across this drifter in each of the game's four very large areas, and I'll take a moment to point out that calling them drifters isn't just a statement on what they do, it's a title for what seems to be their job. Directly from the game's Kickstarter page: Drifters of this world are the collectors of forgotten knowledge, lost technologies and broken histories. With that in mind, it makes perfect sense why your character has come here, outside of the implication that he was led there by that Anubis dog from his dreams. Each of the four areas, even the central town itself, clearly has a story behind them. All four are dilapidated remains of what was once a much larger civilization, and those that remain don't seem to entirely know what it all is.
The first thing I noticed in my explorations of those areas is that every piece of ancient and active technology has the same strange color to it that your blood does, and whenever you get near them, they cause strange crackling audio distortions. I'm of the firm belief that all these things are connected to Judgement, but it's difficult to be a hundred percent on that despite the evidence, especially after the final area of the game. Last thing I want to do is spoil this pretty-as-fuck game for anyone.
The gameplay is fast, fluid, and punishing if you can't adjust. The stuff you start out with is fine, but once you fight your first boss, you'll quickly realize that you need the techniques the vendors in town can give to you in exchange for the gearbits you can find while exploring or defeating hordes of enemies. You collect four gearbits, they turn into an upgrade module thingy, and when you get enough you can trade them in for sweet, sweet moves like a bullet-absorbing shield that appears when you dash while an enemy bullet is just a few inches away from you, allowing you to absorb the ammunition to use in your own guns. Or the essential super dash that lets you dash rapidly and much faster than normal if you can get the button-pressing rhythm down for it. It's surprisingly easy to screw it up if you don't pay attention.
Everything about the way the game controls just feels good, if you're using a controller. As I've said, I can't say what it'd be like on a keyboard, but from my imagination alone, I wouldn't wish that on anyone but my most hated enemies. Of course, the game itself is heavily based around exploration, and finding things that can help you piece together what actually happened in each of the four areas of the game. It says a lot that I still couldn't tell you exactly what went down with any degree of certainty. Perhaps you'll have better luck than I did? Or maybe you'll look up a lore analysis video on YouTube, I dunno. I personally think that'd ruin the mystique of the game.
The art of this game is beautiful. Every single thing is carefully-crafted sprite artwork that flows so smoothly, you can tell that whoever made all this really cared. The colorful and bright presentation inherent in every aspect of it is a joy to behold, a strong callback to a time when games used to all be colorful and pretty, in an almost cartoon-esque fashion. There wasn't a single moment where the environment felt wrong or out of place in this game. I found it easy to get immersed and lost in the exploration of it all. Of course, if sprites aren't your thing (you sad, sad person), your experience will likely be very different from mine.
The difficulty in this game factors in every single aspect of the gameplay. The normal game gives you five pips of health, meaning that at maximum you can take up to four hits, with the fifth one killing you. There are several enemies in the game that can do two pips of health worth of damage instead of one, and all of the bosses have almost nothing but attacks that do two pips of health worth of damage. This isn't that much of an issue in the normal game as long as you get used to the techniques the game gives to you, and you get used to using all of them in equal measure. This is a massive issue in New Game Plus, which I have dubbed 'Get Fucked Mode'.
New Game Plus changes almost nothing from the normal game, except for one very key difference: you only have two pips of health, and that's it. This means that all the bosses can easily one-shot you, and even normal enemies can easily kill you if you get even remotely overwhelmed, let alone all the ones that can also kill you in a single attack. You need to perfect your skills at that point and avoid taking damage as much as possible, because even attacks you can still survive are treacherous because the next one, no matter what it is, is going to kill you. Considering it actually takes a moment to use a medkit on yourself, you can't even rely on those to keep yourself safe in New Game Plus. All you can do is get good.
If I may toot my own horn, I beat New Game Plus. 
Did I enjoy this game? Yes, I think that goes without saying. Do I recommend it for others? Yes, very much so. Specifically, I recommend it if you're a fan of fast-paced character-action games. The semi-overhead viewpoint of the game lends well to people that were fans of more old-school sprite-based games with a more modern flair to it. The game will beat you up, but it won't take your lunch money. It'll reach down, help you up, and ask you if you want to go another round, like a sparring match with a friend. Not once did the difficulty make me feel like stopping, even on New Game Plus. If this sounds like your kind of thing, I'd suggest giving it a shot! The price is twenty bucks on Steam, which is a bit steep, but considering the polish that went into it, I can see why.
I like this game as much as I hate it. It hits on so many things right, but the few buttons it manages to hit, drives to despise the game with a passion I reserve for less savory things. Everything about it screams quality, and it is, the world just lets you do amazing things. Once you get going.
The few buttons, are even with controller how I felt the controls, even with controller, this game wanted to fight me on everything. It wasn't an issue of running it without dips, but the controls just lagged and felt sluggish, and it happened at such times, that it left a very bitter taste in my mouth to this. There is just enough wrong in how it handled there to be very notable.
Everything about this was amazing, story it tells, design, audio. I loved it. Just the controls kept consistently going against me, that I had to set it down, or punch out a monitor.
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I've heard of some people having an issue with that. Might have something to do with it being locked at 30fps. As I said, it's punishing if you can't adjust to the game's pace. I found it plenty agreeable, so I can't say I ever shared your problems with it. I won't deny that if they'd somehow made the game run at a solid 60fps, it would be even better.
4206206 Have you looked at Momodora: Reverie Under the Moonlight in wondering? For its style, approach, and a bit different take on the metroid-vania (as its dubbed for type) of game. Its very different from most, even got an insane mode (1 hit death.) And plenty of ways to customize how you play.
But it may be the 30fps, it may not be, im not sure there, but I know I am very sensitive about controls. I can't stand the sluggish nature of dark souls 1 and 2, (To use an example) for the same reasons without the fix, which now is bannable sadly. Or Monster Hunter, which has its own issues.
It's been my biggest issue with a lot of games, despite liking, or loving many in this style.
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I think I've heard the name of that game somewhere, but I never checked it out. I'll have to get around to doing that. I don't have a lot of money to spend on videogames though, and I blew my budget for it this month already on Hyper Light Drifter.
I suppose I'm less sensitive about controls because I grew up in an era of gaming where the slowdown and sluggishness of some games (especially on the SNES) was a feature that could actually sometimes be to your benefit rather than a sign of poor quality. It's actually a disconnect for me. Fully 3D games like Dark Souls, I can cope with sluggish controls just fine, I've been doing it all my life. I just expect a certain kind of smoothness to the animations, things that don't throw me off. It's all about coming to understand the delays on the actions available to you in those types of games, feeling out how long it takes to do different attacks, that sort of stuff. The same can be said for Hyper Light Drifter, it's just that the game demands rapid thought processes from you and the ability to stay in motion and make snap-decisions.
Sadly, I've never touched a Monster Hunter game. You may like the newer one that's going to come out on consoles, though. I think I heard that one's going to be smooth and super-high quality.