With charismatic characters and good timbres to formulate an excellent rhythm game, Hex tech Mayhem does not know how to polish its details.
When Riot Games announced intention to expand its IPS with independent productions through the Riot Forge seal the questions were many. This kind of movements have generally resulted in minor games, of little known studies, with which to exploit a market more focused on mobile devices. But, of entry, that's what Riot Games do, and when Riot Forge turned out to be working with studios such as Airship Syndicate, Tequila Works or Choice Provisions, his plans were still more confusing. But if something has been clear after the publication of the first two titles under the sponsorship of Riot Forge is precisely, what were their intentions: to make games based on Riot's licenses, within the universe of Runeterra, but leaving the studies involved Doing exactly what they best know how to do.
Basic information
Developer: Choice Provisions Editor: Riot Forge Platforms: PC, Switch Proven version: PC Availability: 11/16/2021
This, which can sound like something heretical and rather as something common sense, is something weird in the world of video game. As Square Enix has been demonstrated by hiring Crystal Dynamics to make a game of Marvel's Avengers, it is not uncommon for a great company to work with a smaller company to make a game that does not fit with your personality, or with that of the company or The one of the license. But, at least in the case of Hex tech Mayhem: A League of Legends Story, license and company have turned out to be a good partner.
Hex tech Mayhem is a game about the morale known as Riggs and his search for the perfect explosion. Here you would have many questions, and all have simple answers. A Morale is a kind of hairy fairy who lives in another dimension, according to the Lore of the Universe of Runeterra, which is what is called the world of League of Legends. Riggs is a well-known and beloved character by Mob players owned by Riot. And a perfect explosion, in Riggs's eyes, is any explosion that is even greater and more destructive than the previous explosion he has caused. Hex tech Mayhem is neither a mob nor a narrative game, but a rhythm game.
For those who do not know the genre, in the rhythm games we have to introduce a series of inputs as they appear on the screen, following the cadence of music. In this sense, both the games of Hatsune Miku and Rock Band or Take No Catsuit are rhythm games. And it is a tradition in which Riggs feels at home, even if the percussion of it is the unusual musicality of the bombs exploding.
This, in playable terms, is explained in a simple way: Riggs can only move in one direction, there are obstacles on their way, and can overcome them using their explosives either to rise, to descend or to pull bombs to obstacles. Although the game has an explicit inputs, telling us what we should do at every moment at the rhythm of music, there are other inputs implicit that can be overlooked and do not count for our basic score. If this sounds confusing or strange, it is not really, because even a symphony made with explosions has an internal order when listening carefully.
In this case, divide our score into two parts. On the one hand, if we do everything impeccably as the visible inputs indicate, the progress meter will rise. But that is not the only meter; We also have a chaos meter, how many absolutely unnecessary destruction can generate the good of Riggs, which moves through our ability to, in addition to following the visible inputs, also react to the inputs not visible within the adventure.
These inputs are not visible because they are not explicit indications on which button we have to touch, but it does not mean that they are not visually and soundly represented in the game. This, which is typical of platform games — instead of telling us that we jump in each jump, we understand that we must jump to overcome an obstacle or get a reward — it gives some depth to the game, especially because, besides being a Natural pulsation within the rhythm of the melody we are listening, there are always objects, enemies or obstacles to which it would be logical to react. If the game tells us that we should jump and let ourselves fall into a trampoline, but immediately before there is a trampoline and music clearly makes a redoubled, would not it is logical that we did it also perform a double fall to jump on both trampolines instead of Only in the second?
At least, that is the theory. The reality is that many times there are rhythm breaks, hatboxes strange and especially unreasonable scenarios that make it just a question of essay and error to know when we should do something or not that have consciousness, for our sight or our ear, that there is a hidden input. This makes hex tech, more than a rhythm game, seem to want to be a platform game, staying in a strange land from anyone where it is excellent when it is a rhythm game, but it fails remarkably as platforms.
And also causes the Hex tech Mayhem system to have a subtle elegance only in theory. It should be as complicated as we would like it to be, except because it is not; We can suffer all the impacts we want in a phase, but every time it happens we can not pick up coins for a while, and to access each subsequent phase, there will be a certain amount of them. This, adding that to get really high scores we have to enter within the game of inputs hidden from the game — and with them, more currencies —, you can be unfair and frustrating for certain players, precisely because it creates an artificial barrier. Where previous company games like Bit. Trip or Runner 3 were based that their phases were very difficult, but because of it satisfactory to feel that we dominated them, hex tech Mayhem allows us to pass the phases as we want, but then it forces us Repeat them without clarifying what is what asks us about us. If we take into account that the game does not indicate how coins we have caught in previous Runs and which no, and only are worthy for the total amount that we no longer took, the less skilled players can be in absurd alleys without departure where neither They can advance or know how if it is not improving their reflections or going back to spend all the phases, or one in particular where they have more available coins, until they get the coins they did not have and miss them.
This design opacity, unfortunately, is something that Hex tech Mayhem also drags into the artistic. While the design of characters, the animations and the artistic style itself is excellent, it has some serious problems of readability: the characters are small, the objects become tiny, the screen is always full of explosions and objects and inputs and characters and funds, all in perpetual movement, making them advancing, at levels or in aspirations, becoming more and more difficult to read. This is a constant of rhythm games, as shown by the use of the entire Hatsune Miku franchise of the movements of their characters and videos to try to distract the player while trying to make certain particularly delicate combos, but here reaches a point That, although consistent with the character, it ends up being too much.
To this it is possible to add that music seems to want more to honor the character and intention of him than to the mechanics that sustain it. The music itself is simple, reminiscent of classic American cartoons, and in that sense respect the artistic direction of the game. The difference is that the classic cartoons lasted between ten and twenty minutes per episode, with very brief sketches and a great use of orchestration and classical music, while here we only have melodies of a hooligan tone and animated for what, in Last instance, it's a rhythm game. A rhythm game needs your music to be memorable, interesting, and that you can listen to it, literally, thirty or forty times followed without tiring, but the soundtrack of Hex tech Mayhem starts to tire and be heavy after no more than five or six listens, That there are much less than anyone will have to do to get the maximum score in virtually any level, which is a very serious problem in a title in which music is something we need to be actively listening to move forward.
In the end, which makes Hex tech Mayhem is not an authentic Bombay, it is not being able to understand what game they were doing, if a platform or a game of rhythm. A casual game where the gimmick is Riggs and everything should be entertaining and cartoon and spectacular and explosive, or a demanding game where precision and elegance in mechanics should go before building up to the last detail around their character protagonist. With a more diverse, memorable and careful soundtrack, and with a clearer approach or on platforms or on the rhythm, you could have easily forgiven your legibility problems or not knowing exactly to which public is going, but such what is not finished having incentives for those who are not used to this kind of games to get to the end, nor so that the most adepts are dedicated to an obscene number of hours to get everything with Challenger, the maximum possible score of this play. At least if we obviate the last achievement of it, of course.
Because at the end, not even Riggs himself knows what it is, if the protagonist of a platform failed with a cartoon gimmick who does not know how to calibrate the challenge or the main character of a good rhythm game about blowing a snobs city At the rate of the enthusiast shouts of the most hairy punk in the world. And being so interesting one of those two approaches, it is understood even less to try to stay between two lands.
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