Armikrog. A Neverhood spiritual sequel. (PC, Mac, Wii U) (Out now!)

[James]

Speaker of the Dead probably put me off from his shit forever though.

Completely reasonable reaction. I went on to read Xenocide as well and now I'm definitely done with him.

[Mzo]

so did they fix this yet?

[BonusKun]

I kinda want to play this but I'm willing to wait to get all the bugs ironed out. Also is this on Wii U?

[ChaoofNee]

It apparently will be on the WiiU at some point. It was one of the platforms offered to Kickstarters.

When? Who knows?

[Frogacuda]

so did they fix this yet?

They put out a patch to fix a couple of the more egregious issues, but there's still a lot of little stuff.

I'm most of the way through the game, and to be honest, the only bugs that have really bothered me are the music dropping out (which happens A LOT), because I love the music. I haven't hit anything game-breaking, and so far I like the puzzle design and haven't gotten real stuck. If you're excited for the game, I wouldn't necessarily avoid it. It's not unplayable, just unpolished. Feels like a beta test.

[Frogacuda]

So anyone who was holding off for patches, now's a good time to jump in. They've put out like 3(?) patches and fixed most of the notable bugs, as well as made a few small but substantial improvements, like an animated, context-sensitive cursor that lets you know when something is can be interacted with. There are still some small things wrong like a poorly organized menu system (Save/Load is under options?) and no volume mixer to increase the music volume, but the big stuff is fixed.

[Dolemite]

So anyone who was holding off for patches, now's a good time to jump in. They've put out like 3(?) patches and fixed most of the notable bugs, as well as made a few small but substantial improvements, like an animated, context-sensitive cursor that lets you know when something is can be interacted with.

Well, that's good to hear. That cursor was one of the most complained about things...along with all the game-breaking bugs, of course.

There are still some small things wrong like a poorly organized menu system (Save/Load is under options?) and no volume mixer to increase the music volume, but the big stuff is fixed.

Why do people complain so much about Save/Load being in options? Haven't we all played countless (admittedly, older) games where that was the case?

But how would you describe the game overall? I enjoyed the original Neverhood - I just recently installed ScummVM to get it working on Win 8.1 and it's still fun, taking into account the era it's from - but I've read multiple reviews describing Armikrog as pretty lackluster, bugs aside. Is it just that it simply represents zero evolution from the very old-school gameplay of The Neverhood, or is Armikrog somehow worse (or better, in your opinion)?

[Frogacuda]

Is it just that it simply represents zero evolution from the very old-school gameplay of The Neverhood

It's exactly this. It's the same exact formula all over again.

Objectively, it's pretty on-par with Neverhood. Other than the stuff that's been fixed, almost every one of the complaints I've seen people make could be made about Neverhood as well (largely silent characters, nothing said upon interacting with things, tropey logic puzzles, no inventory and simplistic inventory puzzles that resolve automatically if you have the right thing, very little story, but shitloads of backstory). They're very much doing the same thing they did before. But in its defense it also, like Neverhood seems to do a better job than most Adventures of making you think without getting stuck. This might make it easy compared to more hardcore adventures, but I like the pace.

If anything I guess the problem might be that, by virtue of being similar to The Neverhood, it's lacking that novelty of being just unlike anything else that Neverhood had. But if you just want more Neverhood, with prettier graphics/animation, this is pretty much that. No more, but no less.