Moon Diver

[kog3100edw]

Ack. Sounds like this is going to be a huge disappointment for me. I was really looking forward to this game. Strider and me go way back. I played it in the arcade when it was new!

I sometimes have a tolerance for games other people don't like, but the problems sound pretty fundamental. I'll try the demo when it pops up on XBLA just in case... but shoot.

[pepsimanvsjoe]

I hate to do bumps like this but I just posted a review of the game over here: www.extraguy.com/2011/04/moon-diver/

I had a word-limit to work with for the review so if anyone wants me to go into finer detail about why I don't think the game is any good I'm cool with that.

[Discoalucard]

I only really played the demo, but everything there sounds about right. I'm usually a proponent of developers adding RPG-type elements to arcade games to help make them juicier, but it doesn't help when the level desgins are lousy and the action just doesn't feel right. 30 FPS side-scrolling games should be banned on consoles.

Right after playing this with a friend, I booted up Strider 2. It's sloppy and disjointed as all hell, but at least it's smooth and just feels much snappier. The levels are more designed around setpieces too, which would've helped Moon Diver a lot.

[hidetoshidecide]

I've played the demo and didn't think it was as bad as all that. I don't get the Strider comparisons/expectations, though. It's a mostly mindless 2D beat 'em up; nothing wrong with that. It's not great by any means, but if you have that itch, this can probably scratch it.

[Snarboo]

Apr 23, 2011 8:17:21 GMT -5 hidetoshidecide said:

I don't get the Strider comparisons/expectations, though.

It's because Koichi Yotsui was the director for Moon Diver, having formerly worked on the Strider arcade game and Cannon Dancer/Osman.

[pepsimanvsjoe]

Yeah it's weird because certain elements are pretty cool like how double-jumping and dashing can be used to attack enemies.

On the other hand some of the level-design is so terrible I can't imagine what the hell anyone was thinking. The final stage for example feels like it takes nearly an hour to beat and it makes you fight all of the bosses as well as the final over the course of it. The final boss also has a handful of insta-death attacks and thank God I didn't get nailed by any of them or my PS3 would have flown out the window.

[vetus]

From the first stage I played it seems very dull. Too bad, and I was so hyped from the trailers. Such a huge disappointment. It would be OK as an indie game for PC but for an XBLA/PSN game from a famous creator and from a big company I expected more expecially if you compare it with other XBLA/PSN masterpieces like Hard Corps Uprising. Maybe I'll give it a second change if I play it with my friends just for the fun but I don't expect too much.

[kitten]

Repeating what I said on another forum -

"This game is profoundly and embarrassingly bad. I've only played the demo stage, but I have zero incentive to give it any more time than that, I'm in fact impressed I even managed to care enough to finish the demo. The stage was ridiculously long and filled with tons of sections where you just sit there and attack one of the three different enemies for like two minutes. It's boring and requires no skill.

A lot of modern action games seem to suffer from this, trying to simultaneously make a game that's fun for single-player and multiplayer, and also has RPG/leveling elements. They end up with some sort of mess that isn't fun on any level. They all suck except for Castlevania: Harmony of Despair, which in itself really isn't a very good game from a mechanics standpoint and an utterly, repugnantly bad one from the point of how much was recycled and how lazy the visual productions were. It manages to at least be addictive, which is more than I can say for a game like Moon Diver.

When I got to the boss, all I had to do to avoid his attacks was walk behind him. It didn't even hurt me to walk behind him. From there, I could wail on him until he jumped to the other side of the screen, where all I had to do from there was casually walk behind him again. As I went through the stage, I was just mindlessly pressing the attack button (well, charging an attack and then attacking, which is ever-so-slightly less mindless). I'm sure the game develops more on the more difficult stages and that multiplayer will add some redeeming value, but it's bad. Very bad.

This game is going to make Isuke go down as a laughing stock. I wouldn't even call the reviews on it "mixed," they're mostly just really negative."

- - - - - - - -

Seriously, though. This game is trash. It's not funny bad and it's not anywhere near good, the worst type of bad game... a truly mediocre one.

It's funny that, right now, the game holding the throne for the best 2D online co-op with RPG elements is fucking Castlevania: Harmony of Despair. Like, seriously, it shouldn't be so damn hard to make a game exponentially better than that one, but it flies so high over its shitty competition that it's depressing. I dumped easily over a hundred hours into that game because there's nothing else that scratches the itch, and I'm pretty disappointed Moon Diver doesn't even look like a diversion from it.

I mean, I'd argue the next best game to Castlevania: Harmony of Despair (that is, the next best game similar to it, of course) is Maple Story. That's how sad online action-platformers with any sort of RPG elements and online play are. It should be such a fertile genre... Adding the entertainment of action-platforming to a repetitive, but addicting RPG formula really adds a kick you don't get out of big guns like WoW, but it's hardly exploited. C:HoD proved there's an audience for this stuff willing to gobble it up and play it for hundreds of hours, I don't see why actually talented developers can't jump into the fray and make something amazing.