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Sega Mega Drive’s “Sonic Boy” and “Flying Dream” on Saturn are two of my all-time favorite games. Yuji Naka is one of my favorite sports creators, “art director” Noto Oshima, the man who played Sonic Boy, Drs. Egghead, and has designed the Knights, undoubtedly a god-like existence for me. It made me very happy when Square Enix announced in 2018 that Naka Yuji and Oshima had set up a new studio called SE, and heard that they were going to develop a new platform game.
After almost 3 years, I am sitting here, I have all my feelings, but I am not happy! On the contrary, it is quite sad and empty in my heart. The reason for this is that I finished the 9-hour sports marathon, which I finally played after patiently waiting for 3 years, but found that the game was terrific. The newly released “Barans Wonderland” is terrible. After all, writing this article really hurt me a lot, considering all the possibilities and all the talent that the two main creators had. Welcome to the bastion of despair.
Once in the late 90s, a colorful stage game with a prominent mascot was the most important game type. “Thylacine Attack”, “Jake and Daxter”, “Baby Dragon Spyro”, “DonkyKong”, “Abang Aka Adventure”, “Gex”, “Sonic Boy”, “Super Mario”… ..the whole game world is boiling, And the person standing at this focal point is Naka Yuji. Nowadays, the genre is no longer so popular, but given that “Baby Dragon Spyro” and “Thylacine Attack” were particularly popular after its re-release, when Square invested in Naka Yuji and Oshima Naoto’s ambitious projects. Done, it is easy to understand the thinking process of the square.
In “Barnes Whimsical Wonderland”, we will follow Leo Craig and Emma Cole, two children who are in trouble. They all need help. One of them was bullied, and the other was tortured by a difficult family environment. It was during the start of the animation that we were able to see how they had stumbled upon a “wonderland” in all their misery. Mystery of ancient magic. Theater. In this dream world, Balan, like the knights, is a charming dream demon. Their mission is to repair people’s broken hearts by improving people’s minds and getting rid of their dark and uncomfortable memories. But this is done by straying from some useless levels like an idiot, trying on different clothes in an attempt to gain different abilities. This is the most basic premise of this game. It is a wild hybrid between the stage layout of “Sonic Boys Adventure”, the premise of “Flying Dreams” and the clothing focus of “Super Mario Odyssey”.
The worst part of “Baran’s Wonderland” is how stupid it sounds and how incomplete it feels. It is as if someone finds the trash sketchbook in the trash, takes it out and then tries to use all loose ideas as the basis of the game. The sense of control was poor from the start. Leo and Emma are slow, they can jump, but their ability to jump over objects is almost useless, and the animations are similar to a bad PlayStation 2 game.
In theory, these 80 sets of costumes are not a stupid idea, but unlike “Super Mario Odyssey”, the attribution and realization of these costumes is completely absurd. I often turn on a particular set and come to the conclusion that the particular features of the set do not matter, or cannot be used at this level. When you often activate a set of clothes and a special function, you only get the feeling that you can’t use that set of clothes to complete the link here, which means you get more previous Must go in progress or go back. Leo and Ema have many costumes from the beginning with similar special abilities – jumping abilities (even if it’s more like a “limited jump”), which I think Naka Yuji and Oshima just want to use in this game. Super expensive and ugly prank, I should suspect it is a scam.
Additionally, “Balan’s whimsical wonderland”YashouIt is very ugly. Really, really ugly. To be completely honest, the “optimization” for PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X and based on Unreal Engine 4.5 seems ridiculous. The design is a bad combination between Sonic Boy, Nights, Billy Hatcher and Giant Egg and Sirk du Soil, and the presentation and plot are incomprehensible in many ways — you can easily make “Baran’s Whick Whickland” a complete and extremely expensive one Can be described as. Failure. In each chapter, you have to deal with someone’s “dark” feelings and traumatic tragedies, but each of these feelings and the impact on people that they want to help won’t happen until the end of the level is revealed to the player. is. It seems stupid enough to explode. For the most part, I can’t figure out where I am? Who am I? What is the goal? Also, with the settings mocking the poor mechanics, the biggest idiot costumes and the regrettable pictorial effect, this “Barans Wonderland” is the worst game of the year so far. Not one of them.
Freelance twitter maven. Infuriatingly humble coffee aficionado. Amateur gamer. Typical beer fan. Avid music scholar. Alcohol nerd.
