1. From the reaction of the gaming community, you would think this was the first game ever w/ beautiful pixel art, great music and a story. I dunno... Maybe I was expecting too much but the praise for this seems over the top for what it is.
2. It's in the retro-inspired hi-bit style, which basically looks like a Genesis game w/ like five times the resolution. I was not really a fan of the cartoony character sprites but the backgrounds were simply gorgeous. Something about them quite reminds me of the first jungle level of Flashback w/ its dense detail only much higher res so all the more beautiful.
3. Even w/ the eye-popping graphics, the music still manages to steal the show. It is a full orchestral sounding score w/ electronic touches composed by Johnathan Geer and it complements the pretty graphics perfectly. Outdoor sections are accompanied by swooping strings and boss battles are backed by high-energy bombast. It is not just that the music is great but that it fits so well.
4. The music and graphics make it all the more the pity everything else about the game kinda sucks. Sorry you had to heard it from me.
5. This is a variant on the overlooked underdog saves the world trope only instead of being overlooked, the titular owlboy, Otus, is actively treated like he's worthless by everyone from scene one and it is utterly baffling that he does not immediately take sides w/ the enemy. This is a game about owl people who live on islands in the sky and the least believable thing is that Otus rises above abusive behavior by authorities in his community and goes on to do good in the world.
6. Owlboy tries to be something of a hybrid twin stick shooter and platformer. This is a bad idea. For starters, the fact that you can fly really doesn't do much for the platforming. Your ability to shoot while flying is based on your ability to carry various sidekicks who function basically as different weapons. If you get shot, you drop your side kick and don't resume shooting until you release and re-press the shoot button. Also, if you should happen to touch the ground while flying solo, you automatically land and need to jump in the air again to resume flying. Neither of these sounds like a big deal on paper but are both a constant aggravation while playing.
7. The first dungeon area of this is honestly excellent. It has some
mild puzzle solving elements, looks great and has a solid level of
challenge for starting out. It feels like a good introduction to a great
game.
8. Gameplay progress as you play through so much as it gets more aggravating. The puzzles never develop further and instead are replaced w/ stealth sections that are irritating more so than challenging. The other way they chose to add difficulty is a darkness mechanic that just hides everything in the level beyond a very short distance around you. Gross.
10. Taking this into account, I guess it is kind of an upside that you get frequent respites from this garbage in the form of control being wrested from you so you can sit through cut scenes. There is really no attempt to tell the story through gameplay whatever. It is all stop and let us tell you what's going on.
11. This is pretty much a one time through kinda game. If you like, you can go
back an explore previous areas to uncover secret caches of the in-game
currency and buy upgrades you don't really need. This is actually worth
doing in the first few areas but some of the later areas, yeah, I don't
see many people wanting to live through those levels again.
12. Let's tally a score based on what we know about this game, shall we? Pretty graphics, pretty music, mediocre controls, mediocre plot, inconsistent level design and poor storytelling. I think this places this as a rather average gameplay experience on the whole. You might want to check this out if you love how it looks in video clips but temper your excitement before doing so.
13. All of my complaints aside--and knowing of Owlboy's long development cycle--I will say that I do get the strong impression this was a great labor of love from the developers standpoint and it is truly charming as a result of this. The attention to detail into the artistic elements cannot be ignored so I can see why people lost their heads over this when they saw it at PAX or whatever. Still, the game overstays its welcome in so many ways that it's impossible to ignore.
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