Review: Icey

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Review: Icey

Postby Doodle Dee. Snickers » Tue Feb 07, 2017 12:30 pm

Ever since The Stanley Parable, there have been a slew of meta games that are very deliberately pulling players out of the game to make fun of game design or narrative, etc, and often features an unreliable narrator. Of the ones that have come out since then, this might be my favorite.

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Story: By a Chinese developer, it's quite clear that this side-scrolling hack n' slash was made with one eye on The Stanley Parable and the other on Pony Island. You are an experiment named ICEY who's out to defeat the evil machine/wizard-I-guess named Judas who...did some stuff. The story's not truly what's important here, obviously, although the narrator occasionally gets some mileage with the storyline in a way that's almost like a 'Thanks Obama' meme ("Why's this house empty? Judas, probably.")

I got through about five minutes of this game until it stopped, sent up a bajillion in-game error messages, and that was exactly when I knew what kind of game I was dealing with. The game often features the narrator (with no English dub, which was why I pointed out the country of origin up there) getting frustrated with the player in ways that are definitely reminiscent of the narrator from Stanley's Parable. Such occasions as when I deliberately threw myself into a pit three times just to spite him, or walked into a pit of acid that he told me not to walk into, or refused to attack a boss who was helpless and unable to attack me. Also, one ending involves emails from his coworkers stuck in the game and bitching about his management style before quitting, which I thought was rather clever.

Most interestingly, there are powers to unlock through the game that allow you more freedom in how you manage to break through the 'intended' areas of the game, which was something I don't think any of these meta-games have done yet. I wish there was more variety, though, I noticed that there only seemed to be only two or three branches per area.

Gameplay:The hack n' slash is fun and engaging enough, but I was left kind of irritated by some bosses who felt a little too cheap, like one who runs with a buzzsaw in front of him and is very difficult to get behind, so you just eat damage to the face while trying to outlast him. Otherwise, I like that each boss seems to have its own micro-strategy, like one with a hammer whose entire angle is "Stay in the air as long as you can if you don't want to die".

Otherwise, there's not much to talk about here. Have you played Shovel Knight (If not, do)or one of its ilk? Great, you know what you're dealing with here.

Aesthetic: The music is pretty good and very anime-y in a good way. The art style is great, although I noticed some difficulties with the sword slash effects occasionally sticking and some of the videos slowing to a 1 FPS crawl for some reason, but otherwise, it was pretty slick.

Overall, if you liked games like Pony Island or The Stanley Parable, I'd say to give this one a shot. I will say, though, that it's very much on he short side, so I would wait until it goes on sale.
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Doodle Dee. Snickers
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