SATORI

[b]Despite the fun parkour experience Satori at full price is not worth a recommendation given it lacks any form of variety in the procedural generation of levels, the visuals are unchanging and the promotional material on the steam store is outdated and inaccurate presenting content that is non-existent or extremely rare (I'm being generous), that being buildings, tori gates, grass etc...[/b] [h3]Procedural Generation & Style[/h3] The levels are made of a grey base, floating platforms & color-coded parkour terrain unique to the mechanics. There are pentagon jump pads on the floor & in the sky, red walls (no particles) that can be wall ran that also feature a yellow grind rail, yellow orbs (not blue) for your grappling hook and yellow grind rails that are used to gain speed & momentum. Having played through 7 levels (3.5 hour’s worth) the procedural generation sucks, each level I played seemingly shared the same wall running & platform placement and there were no appearances of Tori Gates or variety in location. Every level is the Mirror's Edge-like industrial aesthetics with the color-coded parkour mechanical terrain. Unlike the steam previews & banner there are no buildings or grass, there is a permanent floor and Tori gates are either non-existent or extremely rare with the tree being small & always being in the center of the level. [h3]Gameplay[/h3] Gameplay consists of collecting 200 orbs to unlock the next generated level by parkouring across the aforementioned terrain. You have a dash, double jump and slide that can be used at all times given you have the charges for them and the ability to slow time always available while all other mechanics are linked to specific terrain. [b]Red Walls are the only thing you can wall run on despite grey walls existing, singular hexagon slabs are jump pads, yellow orbs are the only thing you can grapple hook to, and yellow rails are the only thing you can grind on.[/b] The movement & momentum building is a blast to play around with, and I imagine if someone were to master & learn the intricacies of the mechanics, they could make some great clips & have fun speed clearing levels. Grind Rails are great especially using them to gain speed before latching onto grappling orb or entering a wall run. There are however massive gaps between parkour terrain that can result in clunky gameplay especially when all momentum stops upon touching the grey terrain regardless of your inertia. There is a slide to utilise (assumedly) for those instances, but it is extremely finicky compared to everything else. Jump pads also feel a tad odd with inconsistencies on them registering player position and activation, they either activate when nearby to the hexagons in all directions (even below) or only activate if you’re above them. Despite everything mentioned beforehand, I found the collectables & their random placements close to perfect as they incentivize chaining the terrain objects & games mechanics to gain speed & height to reach the difficult collectable placements. [h3]User Interface[/h3] The UI is minimal and displays the activatable controls (dash, jump & slide) in the center of the screen, a grapple hook prompt with its respective keybind will appear on grapple points when in range, additional controls appear at the bottom of the screen (pinging, position reset and slowing time), a timer in the top right to keep track of your time spent in level, a hide UI prompt in the bottom right and the collectable count in the top left. The latter only tracks 200 orbs that is needed to generate another level however there is a maximum count per level that’s randomized. Collecting all orbs aren’t needed to progress however if you enjoy that specific level generation it can give you something to do and collecting all of them is also needed for an achievement if that’s your sort of thing, although there’s no UI tracking for the full level count, reminiscent of early xbox 360 titles like Crackdown. In my own experience there was around 700 orbs in a single level to collect when I gathered them up. [h3]The Menu[/h3] The game's menu can be awful upon first viewing with a bunch of rings around icons that lack some explanation, however with a little thought & minor association to the icon's design it's easy to understand. For the sake of sharing information. [list] [*]The top bar of the UI explains the controls & key binds can be rebound upon selection. [*]The center bar is to pause exit the game and the menu. [*]The top two in the bottom right ring are to invert your camera movement on the X/Y axis. [*]The segmented box and crosshair swaps between Fullscreen & Windowed. [*]The shaky camera I believe is to disable screen shake/view bobbing although it's minimal. [*]The cone & number are used to adjust Field of View (FOV) [*]The others options are obvious with one to mute audio (although there's very little with no music) & change game resolution. [/list] [h3]Conclusion[/h3] I don’t Recommend Satori at the full price of $11.50AUD despite the fun movement & parkour. The actual gameplay experience lacks content seen in promotional material, and it lacks a reason to play beyond one level or a reason to return even as a quick load for a meditative experience due to the lack of variation in visuals & object placement but your preferences may vary. [b]HOWEVER, I do think Satori is worth picking up during sales ($2.87) as it does feel great to play and I think it should be experienced by those who enjoy parkour titles, although even at that price is a tad steep given what I've mentioned already in the review.[/b]