The Waste Land

"The Waste Land" ist ein Retro-2D metroidvania-like Plattformer. Metroidvania-Spiele haben primär eine Konsolenvergangenheit. Es gibt Plattforming, reichlich Gegner, Dinge zu finden und Verbesserungen, mit denen man Wege gehen kann, die zunächst unerreichbar schienen. Dadurch gibt es in dem Genre in der Regel reichlich (gewolltes) Backtracking. Angeblich basiert die Story und das Setting auf dem Gedicht "Das wüste Land" von T.S. Eliot aus dem Jahre 1922. Dieses komplexe Konglomerat aus Textfragmenten und Anspielungen, in dem Eliot zahlreiche intertextuelle Verweise realisierte, die etwa auf Wagner oder Shakespeare rekurieren, ist eines der vielschichtigsten Langgedichte aller Zeiten, gern verglichen mit James Joyce "Ulysses". Was nun dieses Spielchen mit dieser literarischen Fackel zu tun haben soll, bleibt das Geheimnis des Machers. Die Verweise bleiben oberflächlich, irrelevant und bemüht. Das Gameplay selber ist vor allem eins: äußerst repetetiv. Wir springen nach rechts und links und schlagen mit unserem Schwertchen oder Pfeil und Bogen auf intelligenzbefreite, meist animalische Gegner ein. Die hinterlassen gerne mal etwas Nahrung, die unsere Lebensleiste auffüllt. Und immer wieder müssen wir Herzen oder Verbesserungen wie einen Doppelsprung aufsammeln. Auch Bossgegner sind zu besiegen. Zwar gibt es viele verschiedene Orte, kreativ designete Locations; dumm nur daß die einen nicht wirklich zu interessieren vermögen. Und das liegt daran, daß das Gameplay nicht zu überzeugen vermag. Ich hab mehrfach, mit einigem Abstand angesetzt, daß Game zu spiele. Spätestens nach einer Viertelstunde war jedesmal ich grundlegend gelangweilt. Die Steuerbarkeit unserer Figur ist rudimentär und eher träge. Nervig auch, daß die Gegner sich nicht treffen lassen, wenn sie noch in der letzten Getroffen-Sein-Animation hängen. Das ständige Schwertgeschlage gegen dümmliche Gegner wird zudem verdammt schnell langweilig. Die Grafik ist pixelig passend, teils sogar richtig gelungen Retro. Unfaßbar anstrengend zeigt sich die ständig loopende Musik. Sicher, die Piepsounds gab es damals auch, aber damals gab es auch Komponisten (wie Rob Hubbard), die aus den begrenzten Möglichkeiten grandiose Stücke zu erzeugen vermochten und nicht wie hier einen Angriff auf jeglichen melodischen Geschmack. "The Waste Land" ist ein ambitioniertes Retro-Projekt. Leider vereinigt es vor allem das, was an den alten Konsolentiteln nervig, anstrengend und langweilig war ohne eine eigene, neue, heutige Interpretation des Genres zu erzeugen. [h1]Wertung:[/h1] 5/10 Atmosphäre 4/10 Story 6/10 Grafik 1/10 Sound 5/10 Spielmechanik 4/10 Balancing 5/10 Spielspass [h1]Fazit:[/h1] The Wasted Land. [h1][b]5/10 Gesamtwertung

Тот редкий случай, когда покупая игру, для того, что бы просто забить время, залипаешь в ней на часов 10... От одного только саунд-трека внутри потеплело, вспомнились времена, когда даже денди казалось роскошью. Годная игра, под старый лад, с годной отрисовкой и саундом, сохраняет атмосферу былых лет. 8 из 10 беззащитно-агресивных черепах.

This is the first time I have ever written a negative review. The game is just that bad. I mean I was trying to overlook its glaring weaknesses - the repetitive soundtrack (eight 30-second loops that get old really fast). The fact that you can't mute the music. The worst writing I've seen in a game. The massive areas that had nothing but hordes of boring enemies you have no incentive to fight. The "exploration" aspect that most of the time ended you in massive enemy-filled dead-end. After all, this is an indie game and the core combat was somewhat solid. And then I reached the end. And in the end there was a boss. And I just realised - hey, at a certain point of development the dev thought that fighting this guy would be fun experience. And that moment he lost all credibility in my eyes. Without spoiling anything - it's a luck mission. He has means to draw out the fight almost indefinitely, attacks without any delay or setup and in his second phase he can punish you for attacking him regardless of your actions - basically attack him and get randomly hit for massive damage. Overall the game has not been fun experience and I've played for 8 hours just out of some perverted curiosity.

🕸️ «The Waste Land» is more like "waste of your time". It's a bad «Simon's Quest» metroidvania. You never know where to go, and the NPC's always saying nonsense. I spent 3h exploring a few similar locations in the first region, and the same monotonous soundtrack was playing in the background the whole time, which becomes annoying after a couple of minutes. Every enemy in this game just slows you down. There is no EXP or GOLD, but they can drop items that take away your health, which means there is no point in killing them! Isn't it fun? The tech. part of the game (controls, hitboxes etc.) is poorly done and hasn't been improved over the years. There is also easily recognizable redrawn character sprites from other games, such as Julius Belmont from the «Dawn of Sorrow».

очень минималистичная бродилка, на самом деле никому не советую, но мне зашло.

can't even change the controls.. wow... This game feels like it was made 30 years ago, rather than being an homage to games from that era. I mean this in all the worse ways.

I can only recommend this to people who are smitten with the art style and the Eliot/Fraser allusions and who also loved the stiffness of the early Castlevanias so much that you'd play a game that chose to impose that limitation on itself. For me at least, a Metroidvania comes down to rhythm, and this does not leave room for rhythm. Combat is largely a jumping straight up in the air, seeing if an enemy enters the range of your sword, maybe scoring a hit, then repositioning and jumping straight up in the air. An initial frustration with the tiny hit area of your starting weapon gives way to boredom once you learn the patterns of the three or four enemy types (in the opening stages), at which point everything becomes a slog. A perfect example: There is this terrifying, gigantic fire-breathing zombie dog that is maybe seven or eight times the size of your character. You walk up to and go "oh man, I am gonna get wrecked by that." After one such encounter, you will have discovered the completely foolproof strategy for defeating it, which is to stand perfectly still and mash the stab button in order to stun lock it until you hit five times. (This does not take precise timing, and because of invincibility frames, this takes a solid four or five seconds. That sounds like a ridiculous complaint, but the time spent standing there just ruins any sense of fluidity or rhythm.) It's one thing to ask you to grind through enemies that are more annoying than challenging, but there doesn't seem to be any reason behind the grind. There's no experience or money or anything like that. The only thing that enemies drop is food that restores HP that you lost to other enemies you didn't have any reason to fight. They're just an impediment, which is so much worst in an exploration-heavy game that has you clearing the same screens several times in order to make progress. Oh and the music that plays through the opening areas is just awful and repetitive and somehow both droning and intrusive, yet it goes on forever without variation. Again, gorgeous game. Lots of beautiful grace notes (there's a brief character moment in the cathedral that isn't to be missed), and maybe for you there's an 8-bit nostalgia factor. I wish I wanted to finish this.

никому не советую, но мне понравилась.

Aweful game: -boring music (repetitive) -poorly designed enemies (scripts + anims + sfx) -huge but "empty" world -horrible controls DON'T ever call this game a metroidvania; it lack almost everything metroidvania means. I want a refund for this botched game.

Busted old game that got abandoned by it's devs and producers. Can barely manage to get the controls to work, and even then there are so many broken instant death and OP boss moments, it really doesn't make the game worth playing. Better off with a more polished Metroidvania title.