Matterfall: Video Game Overview

Release of each new game Housemarque Always for me is akin to the holiday. These Finnish developers are best able to create both spectacular, and insanely exciting arcades, spending time in which you want again and again. And this year they released two games at once: Nex Machina And Matterfall. And if the first turned out to be almost an ideal shooter with a top view, then the second ..Enemies scatter on small pieces, as in other housemarque projects.

Pale shadow

The plot is still sketched: the main character, Avalon Darrow, dressed in a protective suit, saves residents of the fictional town from the crowd of terrible creatures. This time, the so-called smart matter was oncehed to humanity, which forcing robots attack their creators. The whole story is served in the form of two videos at the beginning and at the end of the game, and the authors will not share any details of the Universe. By and large, these rollers could not add anything – nothing would change.

Gameplay Matterfall is a platformer with all familiar games Housemarque details. Protagonist runs, jumps, shoots in all directions by otelie right-wing. For the destruction of opponents, glasses filling the combo scale are issued – the higher the number, the more glasses accumulates for each action. Everything is done according to the template, and it is assumed that the player will reflash the levels once over the sake of achieving the best result. But there is no desire to do it.

As it turned out, simple transfer of the elements of the arcade shooter to the platformer is not enough. IN Resogun And Nex Machina fear of injury and knock off the combo is not only connected with the number of enemies, but also with limited space. You can’t fly away on the boat or run away from the crowd of enemies, because in the pair of meters there are as many opponents. IN Matterfall as the heroine moves from side to side, it always manage to retreat and shoot on robots from afar. Here are not awarded for speed, but, on the contrary, they encourage slowness – even the combo counter does not decrease if standing still.

Sometimes there are situations when they are locked between dozens of dangerous drugs, but in these cases freezing jerk saves. After one press, Darrow rushes in the specified side, making everyone, by anyone else flew. This is the only original idea in Matterfall, which simultaneously turns out to be a big plus, and a serious minus. On the one hand, she makes a banal shooting of the villains more fun – freezing the whole Vatage of flying balls does not bother up to the final. But on the other hand, because of her, many clashes become extremely simple, because you can simply escape from the crowded enemies of the zone and water all the lead from a safe place.Destroying robots, heroine spits the scope of the rage – you press the square and become stronger for a couple of seconds.
Start levels anenate forces either does not make sense too, since almost everything is found during the first passage. IN Nex Machina hiding a huge number of bonuses, due to what a desire arose with greater attentiveness to rebuild locations. And everyone had to look for right during the shooting of opponents, trying and run away from the crowd of robots, and in time evacuating all the inhabitants, and the combo counter does not knock.

IN Matterfall Types of secrets are only two: people locked in cockcocks, and similar to purple pears Cakes with bonus glasses. At the presence of a person hinting a flashing icon in the corner, but without him to guess the location of the victim is not difficult – just, if you need to run forward in the plot, you should try to go back, up or down. I have never had to restart the levels because of the missed people – everyone turned out to be obvious. Well, I collected the caches only in the first world – in the rest they, apparently merge sometimes with the background and easily skip them.

More unnecessary

Perhaps the search for people intentionally made such an elementary task, because when they salvation, they give additional types of weapons or passive improvements. But very little from them. The arsenal of heroines can be replenished with self-equipping shells, shotgun, railnotron and grenade, and it is so “powerful” items that forget about their existence immediately after receiving. Sometimes a shotgun use against the “thick” enemies, and the pomegranate can be useful in battle with “bosses”. But without this, no problems arise, so it is worth collecting a weapon. Is that for trophy in PSN.

Passive improvements – the same unnecessary option. The most useful of them is an increase in the damage from the main weapons, but it is given almost at the very end when Matterfall Already begins to bother. Before that, you get, for example, the ability to beat more often from opponents of the material of matter – these are big blue balls that can be exploded with an extra gun along with a number of robots. Or unlock the skill that allows you to activate these spheres during jerk. You can still increase the health of health, but on the fourth level of complexity (which is not available at the first pass) this modifier does not work.Such moments only seem complicated – jerks saves from all the troubles.
As a result, it is not entirely clear why in general to spend time on the game. In pursuit of glasses and the desire to win the records of records there is no pleasure. Secrets look very simple, and no sense from them. Additional modes, in addition to the campaign, are not represented in general – not to you endless waves, nor the same tasks, but with sophisticated conditions. It could be forgive if Matterfall did not consist of twelve levels, three of which are the battles with “bosses”. Content enough for two or three hours. Yes, and differences between the first and third worlds are insignificant – there are few new enemies, and the old just become a little stronger.

The most annoying thing is that the game is extremely easy even on the “veteran”. To take the creation of this studio at the low levels of complexity I do not see the point, so I immediately launched the highest among those affordable – and almost never experienced problems. The heroine in stock has two lives, and the “treatment” falls about every third opponent. Considering that it is often on a player who flies two dozen robots, quickly freeze them and it will not be easy to shoot in a second. In the extreme case, you can simply hide, waiting apart by jerks. Surely on the “master” where every wound leads to death, difficulties will arise many more. But the main problem will not be fragility of the heroine there, but.

To invented developers, the layout is very difficult to get used to – it is unnecessary as compared to Resogun And Nex Machina. On L1 make a jerk, you jump on R1 (you will never try to press x even at the end of the game), let’s release ordinary shells with right-wing sticks, L2 is responsible for shooting from gun creating matter. Her sole purpose is to make transparent blue platforms and walls durable to walk on them or block the path of opponents. Absolutely idiotic and contrived opportunity, especially annoying during complex episodes, in which you jump from side to side and try to escape, clamping four buttons at the same time for drawing blocks on the fly. A, this gun is activated by elevators, which in the game only three or four.It is not clear why the caches here are called objects that are difficult not to notice.***
After watching the titers Matterfall There is a feeling that Housemarque just wanted to get rid of the game as soon as possible. Made twelve levels, sketched a couple of secrets, invented several additional abilities – and in the PlayStation Store. Probably, the studio planned to part with Sony and completely go to independent development – Nex Machina She published independently and even released it on PC. Or the finnas it’s time to take a break until it’s too late.