I tried, I really did. I bought the game before it was even in the top 100 (its now #1 in popularity and gross sales). I beat the Odyssey campaign in about two hours, and I even logged a couple hours in arcade mode. This was the middle of last week. Since then I’ve tried to play it every day, and every day I shut it off a minute later and go play more Small World. I get that its trippy, I get that. I also understand that if I habitually used LSD, this game would be AWESOME. Here’s the thing: I don’t, and this game gets really boring, really fast.
The core concept is proven. You absorb things and get bigger. Yeah, like that game, and that one, also this one. I could go on. It falls apart about the time you beat the Odyssey and realize that whats left is the exact same thing you just played, only ten times harder. I don’t have a problem with challenging games, but I do have a problem with turning a casual arcade game into a hardcore puzzle game without any kind of a learning curve. I have a feeling the developers finished the core game, polished it, realized they needed to add more content, and then piled on a bunch of gameplay modes and additional levels without properly tuning them.
I want to give Hemisphere the benifit of the doubt and believe that they will continue to update the game into a better experience. Frankly though, I doubt I’ll have the motivation to pick it up even if they do.
