Re: GoldGun Episode 1 finally released on app stores!
Okay I've been away today since I was having a singing lesson and spending some time at my parents so haven't been able to check the boards.
I have however played gold gun episode 1 through, and I'm going to give my thoughts now.
I apologise if I happen to repeat something someone else has said or if I'm breaking in on a discussion in mid flow, since I'm deliberately writing my thoughts about the game before I've read anyo0ne else's, indeed the only post I've read in this topic was David's first post mentioning the game's release.
First, as a positive point I like the audio including the background music. The acting is sort of fun (the Russian gangster or whoever he was at the made me laugh for being so wonderfully overthetop), I also liked at least some of the dialogue, for example the point where Soren taunts Hugo about not being beautiful.
I also like the sort of matrix setup for the game itself, and I thought the final rotation puzzle was an interesting use of the Iphone haptics even if it was over rather too quickly to be really difficult.
Now on to the less good stuff.
Firstly, the gameplay is really easy. essentially just hear and react by sliding the phone with no judgement involved. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with that, but tits exactly the same thing we've seen in audiogames time and time before.
I thought I would give things a pass since it seemed to be a tutorial, but right at the stage we seemed to be getting into the game properly, the thing ended.
That is my second point, I very much hope the paid chapters of the game are longer than this one.
I started the game on a train journey, played for 15-twenty minutes, had to stop since we were getting into the station, then started again and had finished within two more minutes.
In the previous topic I said that I had no problem paying 2.5 Euroes for a game considering that that is what I would pay for a cup of coffee, and a game would last me longer than a cup of coffee, I'm afraid though, this game literally does! last me as long to finish as a cup of coffee.
Of course, if this first episode is just a preview and later chapters will be far longer, that is fair enough.
if however this is the planned length of each episode, then I will say I would be disappointed for a commercial game.
Lastly, the character.
I'm afraid this was my major issue here.
Soren is so sterreotypically blind. every topic of conversation is blindness, he has to have people describe every room to him even in a familiar place, and it takes a contrived audio interface to give a reason for him to actually do what he does.
He even did the "let me touch your face thing", which is something I've honestly never known a blind person do in reality, but something which for some odd reason every sighted person tends to assume blind people do do.
As I said previously, I don't mind playing a character who happens to be blind, but in this game, Soren is very much a "blind!" character with a capital blind! everything he does is blind! and based on very standard blindness tropes.
I'm afraid in general, Gold gun has a lot of the hallmarks of a first audiogame, from reaction based gameplay, a central concept and character that is so much about "blindness" it isn't about much else.
I will admit this aspect of things I am disappointed in, since I was hoping we would have a crime drama with actual interesting confrontations and plot.
All that being said, there are positives here, I like the audio, and the sf plot has potential to be an interesting one, also I will very much hope that gameplay will get away from simple "here it, hit it" model and into something a little more detailed in future, indeed when Soren was being guided around his office I did wonder if we were in for full scale first person adventure to replace Pappasangre.
So, while I will freely admit to being a trifle underwhelmed with this particular instalment, I hope things will improve in the future, especially if the Mytruesound team can take a few of these cryticisms on board.
Oh, and I'm still looking forward to audio wizards .
-- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
