okay, this game. it looks good and I wanted to like it, but its flaws make it unplayable.
so - launched the game, it gave me two options: play Evil Hazard, or maybe you'd like to play Evil Hazard. that second one is fullscreen although you'd never know it, but beware of picking it because this game seeemingly has no exit function other than x-ing it out. escape doesn't work; it makes a "ping" noise but does nothing; Q does nothing, no button I pressed worked. so there's no way to get out of it in fullscreen beyond task manager; maybe I'm wrong and it's hidden somewhere, but why would you do that? give me a readily visible means to close out of it; that's just basic. we'll come back to another basic in a minute.
upon launch, either fullscreen or windowed, the game presents a pixel-art logo (I like pixel art so this is not a negative for me) that sparkles and gleams v e r y s l o w l y and it seems like an odd choice but whatever. then the game invites you to "PRESS TO START." uhhh, okay? press what? I know you don't mean any buttons on my controller because there's no support for that, so I make a good guess, hit enter, and am rewarded with success: new game, load game, or options. there actually are no options; two separate volume controls and a window size control. don't think about rebinding keys because it isn't happening for you. oh, and if you hit escape from the second menu, it pings helpfully and superimposes the "PRESS TO START" command over it. awesome.
anyway, start the game. it has some control instruction which is handled very straightforwardly by flatly scrawling it across the screen with a "hit h to toggle" command, so at least there's no mystery here; hit space to jump, and... s a i l across the screen like Luigi from Mario 2 just stepping out of a moonlander. mein gott, is the control and movement intended to be this mushy or is the game just that painfully laggy? my machine runs Skyrim on ultra-high quality with no problem; it handles Risk of Rain on Monsoon dfficulty three or four loops in, no problem... if this is bogging me down it's the game, not the computer, and that's assuming that isn't just ... how this game plays. the store page video didn't really shed any light on it either. the combat seems like it could be good but the opioid languor with which it proceeds makes it impossible to tell. oh yeah, and that other basic I mentioned above? there's no pause. inventory doesn't pause; it just obscures a still-active screen with the inventory (a decision other games than this have made, granted, and which I fail to understand in any context outside of online play). map doesn't pause either; it doesn't provide a map - oh no, it takes you TO an overworld map, the existence of which was not hinted at beforehand and which ends your progress in the level it dumps you in at the start. and escape... well, escape just pings stupidly and achieves nothing.
so in summary I cannot recommend this game without some serious fixing; it seems like a kernel of a good idea executed very frustratingly.
