Unit 4

Horrible Controls and movement physics. The game its self may have some good content and level design, however there is no fun to be had only frustration and for $14.99 there is no way I can recommend the game, even on sale I can't recommend. In addition at least two of the positive reviews are fake, I never knew how people could tell if a review was fake and so when I saw two reviews for Unit 4 each with comments saying they are fake, I thought I would look a little closer. Both are written by profiles set on private, which alone doesn't justify suspicion, however they both only have a few games and "2" Reviews and when I looked at the two reviews for both those accounts they were both for the exact same 2 games which also happened to be 2 games developed by the same company as eachother with similar reviews. In conclusion I recommend you, the reader, avoid this game, not because of sketchy reviews but because the most important part of any platformer is movement and controls and physics and this game has all of those wrong, and I love platformers so this was quite a disapointment.

I really tried to give this a fair shake, but there's some issues that just won't let me enjoy the game. The character mechanics needs some serious work, especially the character with the double jump. Jumping already feels uncontrollable and floaty, but add in the fact that you have to make the first jump with one button and then to double jump and jump from wall to wall you use another button. Besides the other characters needing work, just switching from character to character has been frustrating, especially when you need to do it quickly. Another thing that stands out to me is that some of the mob hitboxes are off which make things even worse. Overall the game just isn't fun and that's disappointing cause it looked like I'd enjoy it. One of the minor things that should be changed is that there's a place inside the game which will take you to the store to get the free DLC, however it's not free. It's only a buck, but the devs should probably change the message to reflect that. The devs posted one update with a couple fixes shortly after launch back in 2017 and then one more to announce they launched the DLC. The only things after that were about it being on sale and nothing about improving gameplay and fixing things. Its Q1 of 2019 so I don't see this changing in the future. This is a very easy Not Recommend. EDIT: I just looked and I didn't even get 1 card for having around 3 hours playing the game.. that doesn't seem normal.

Funny game: the powers are cool, level design is well done, nice ideas but... ...the game is completely unpolished. With at least 9 additional months of development it could have been really great: if controls, hitboxes, balancing settings, pixel art rendering were polished enough we would be facing a great platform game. Such wasted potential. 6/10.

I believe the overall score for this game, which is currently "mostly positive" is very misleading; there seem to only be 40% of reviews that are positive. I stand with the 60%. The game is nice to look at, I like the art style, I think I might even like the characters and their animation to an extent. I do however, dislike every other element of the game. The music is mediocre, and it is missing completely from some key areas and menus. The controls in the game are floaty, and not clean enough for a platformer, controls that are this shaky are fine in many genres, but not in a genre where controls are a key element. The other glaring problem with the game is enemy hit-boxes. They are either too narrow or maybe poorly defined, but coupled with the poor controls, this is a very annoying issue. It will not take much time for players to be annoyed and irritated playing Unit 4 rather than feeling challenged or interested. There are issues I did not list here, but the ones I have listed are enough to bring the game down to a complete mess as a platformer. [h1]I rate this game as a hard pass, do not waste your time.[/h1]

Even with all its little shortcomings (many of which will be resolved in an upcoming patch, the game director assured me), one can't help but see what a nice little game this is. The pixel art is very cute, and the level design is full of ideas: I've completed the first world so far and I've never encountered the same kind of obstacle twice. The character-switching mechanic is nice, and between all of them, the four protagonists of Unit 4 represent all the gimmicks we've seen in indie platformers in the last 10 years: from the classic double jump and triangle jump, to a warioland-like dash, to the ever present grappling hook, to the ability of de-materializing yourself to pass through obstacles and float gently while falling down. My big gripe with Unit 4 is that having to switch your character using the LB/RB pad bumps it can be quite tricky to do the more complex maneuvers, ie to do a double jump and then a dash you have to start with the blue character, press A for the first jump, X for the double jump, LB to switch to the red character, then X again for the dash. Definitely takes some time to get used to it. I would've preferred to have the four front pad buttons assigned to the four different powers, so that you could ie. dash just by pressing (let's say) B, while also switching to the red character if you haven't already. So the aforementioned example would've been just A/A/B, but most of all the levels could've been traversed in a much more dynamic and spectacular fashion, even if I guess with enough practice you can do it anyway, even with the current control scheme. "Practice" being the keyword here since, while not being a full-blown punisher (many of the most difficult parts are optional), Unit 4 can be quite tough, and some passages will require you memorizing patterns and carefully choosing the best character for the job. In the end it's a very neat little game, not perfect, but enjoyable on its own right. The price is a bit steep right now, but whenever you see it in a bundle it'll be worth a shot. Give yourself enough time to get used to its control scheme, and you'll be surprised at how inventive this title can be!

The section where you learn the controls is already infuriating, so nope. Keep it simpler in future.

I really wanted to like this game. It had a really interesting gimmick and made a great first impression on me. When the game works, it feels great dashing and jumping through the levels. However, the longer I played, the more problems I started to notice. -The grapple hook won't grapple sometimes even after making the *thunk* noise of it hitting something. -The short jump for when you just tap the jump button barely sends you lower which makes short jumps finicky -Landing on the very edge of a ledge will proceed in you edge canceling and often falling to your death -The air control is minimal. if you're jumping you better be sure you're jumping the right way -hitboxes and objects are wonky. -Blind jumps are pretty common and will most likely have a hazard at the end -Auto-scroll boss with very slow phases? no thank you Honestly, a lot of these problems seem like me not being good at the game but all of them together compound into a pretty frustrating experience. I think if you can get this game on sale it might be worth a try but overall I would suggest you spend your time on something else since this game is quite long. 4/10

A fun little game, but I personally wouldn't buy it for it's current price. Luckily, I got it for cheap as part of the Yogscast Jingle Jam Humble Bundle. After playing for a while and enjoying the game I decided to check out it's price and was totally shocked. If you aren't as fortunate as I am to buy it as I did I wouldn't consider purchasing it.

Doesn't control nicely and the game feels really unpolished and like a bunch of well established mechanics of the genre slapped together with some pixel art for appeal. Definitely can't recommend

The controls are dire.