Cookie Cutter Review (Shotgun Justice)
First Impressions
I'm almost 5 hours in. While I am enjoying it, i'm not loving it.
Environments feel very similar to each other, so much so that discovering a new area/biome doesn't feel like a new one. I feel like i'm playing in the same level the whole game thus far.
There's something about the fast animations, most irksome when the game zooms in a bit, like in a smaller room. If i zip my character across the screen, my eyes don't fully track all of the animations or something, not sure how to describe it. Jarring to look at.
It feels similar to how in some other games you need to toggle vsync to make it look right. There's no graphics options to try anything like that though. I'm thinking it is possibly to do with the frames of the animations themselves though, I recall a similar problem when i played Fearmonium (just turning the character left/right in that game looks whack). Anyway, it's a lot better when its more zoomed out, that's when I can enjoy the animations, rather than be distracted by the problem.
I've got other nitpicks, like how if i want to walk off of the left side of a platform to drop down, then I immediately hug right to land somewhere in that direction, i will instead climb the ledge back onto the platform i was trying to drop off of.
I've tried using parry about 10 times and never seen it work, so i just use dodge. It must have a very unclear and specific window to function.
I could've sworn I used my B attack to reflect a projectile at a boss one time, but then failed like 15 times in a row trying to replicate it, so i think that has a very tight/unclear timing window as well (Or I dreamt that i reflected it in the first place :)).
While i listed a bunch of problems, I think I am having fun still. I like breaking stuff. I get kind of OCD with destroying every little thing on the screen.
Movement and combat feels good, though perhaps in part due to the difficulty of not using parry; things can get pretty annoying in places. There are instant death spikes you will get knocked into by enemies, and when an enemy hits you, you get knocked back and can't do anything for a second. You can get gang banged very easily.