Am I the only one feeling disappointed about the recent highly rated platformers? I'm specifically talking about Crash Bandicoot 4 and Yooka Laylee and the Impossible Lair.
About Crash 4:
I really have to force myself playing this even though I'm a massive fan of Crash 1-3 (and naturally the fantastic remake). But Crash 4 just feels off. What's with the double jump? The second jump just takes away all your momentum and doesn't feel natural at all or anything close to the previous games. I failed so many jumps because of that thinking I would keep my momentum but in reality sacrificed length for a little height by executing the second jump too early.
The game also uses its 3D space much more than previous games. But that leads to missing the mark when jumping quite often due to the way the camera is set up - even with the yellow circle that is supposed to help you. It wasn't that much of problem in the remake but I notice it here all the time.
Also the devs are clearly mad considering how they designed the levels. They put 100+ boxes in pretty much every level and hide a huge amount of them in absolutely garbage places. In previous games it was fun looking for the one or two boxes you missed but here I'm missing 10+ boxes on pretty much every level despite being quite thorough.
Overall my expectations were really high after the remakes and the great reviews Crash 4 received. Thus far I just can't enjoy it and haven't touched it in weeks because of that.
About Yooka Laylee and the Impossible Lair:
The disappointment started early with this one as I absolutely hated the tutorial mission. Things got a little better and after 15-ish levels (thanks to the right tonics) the game gets more bearable.
Let's discuss the bad parts. The movement set is bad. The dash roll that serves as an attack will get you killed all the time. It's so easy to roll over an edge and fall to your doom because you can't just cancel the movement. Even after the rolling part is done, the animation isn't over and you're still sliding for a while. Also the same button as the rolling dash can be used as another attack (tail whip) by standing completely still. Who thought this was a good idea? You're constantly moving in a platformer, so when pressing the attack button you will likely always use the rolling dash. But when a crate or an enemy is on an edge that will get you killed, so you have to move close, completely get your hands off the directional pad or analog stick and use the shitty tail whip. The game barely uses any of the available buttons so there's no excuse.
Next thing: Major gameplay flaws. Nearly every gameplay design choice is flawed. Some levels have conveyor belts and at first it looked like they work just fine but the longer the level got the sooner I saw how broken they were. I don't know what causes it but when you jump on these belts, there's a high probability the conveyor belts won't move you. Sometimes they will but at other times you can just stand still on them and nothing happens. Don't get me wrong this is great for you since that takes away part of the challenge but it happes so frequently that I can't understand how this hasn't been patched.
Another example: There's a level with a wind theme. You get blown up by some kind of updraft and when you're at the top, there will be platforms to land on. After landing the updraft is gone. Sounds good but it happened to me more than once that the updraft didn't quite reach that platform so I fell down and died due to hitting an enemy or other kind of obstacle. How come nobody tested this and either increased the updraft height a little or moved the platforms down a little.
That's just two examples but there are more things like that.
Another thing: At first you have no idea what to collect in this game as there are so many things that it can become overwhelming. Basically, the quills are nice to have but not important. There's no reason to get them all (or a certain percentage) in one run (unlike the boxes in Crash or the Lums in Rayman). If you need them you can always farm them whenever you want. The only thing worth collecting are the 5 coins that every level has. These are hidden and sometimes in similar bullshit places as the boxes in Crash 4 but there are only five so it's not too bad. However, there are huge inconsistencies. Throughout the levels, you can find big quills in different colours that challenge you to do something, usually in exchange for more quills. But since these challenges will increase your risk to die and quills are pretty much worthless, you might as well skip them. However, in some levels one of them will reward you with one of the five coins. In other levels none of them will. So you're pretty much forced to do them just to see if you get a coin out of them or not (Just to clarify, it's not random. In some levels the devs have chosen that instead of quills you will get a coin as a reward but there's no way to find out beforehand.)
There's also a lot of trial and error in every single one of these levels. The worst part is that the level will lock you out of a part if you happen to fail. I once carried a throwable that I needed for a coin to a certain point where I couldn't get back to the last part where the throwable used to be located. Next up was a checkpoint and after that the the cage where I had to use that throwable to grab the coin. Then I continued the level and died before reaching the next checkpoint.
The coin isn't instantly saved (thank god there's a tonic for that later on which I HIGHLY recommend) so I had to reopen the cage with the throwable. Unfortunately I couldn't go back where the throwable was located because the way was blocked. Tough luck, restart the level idiot.
Yay great level design....
