I Can Cope With One Black Hole, But Not 2 Of Them...

Blackhole2 is a game created by sto4

Game: Blackhole2

Maker: Sto4

Creator: Platformer

Pre-Thoughts

Interesting things, black holes. Defined as a region of spacetime from which gravity prevents anything, including light, from escaping. If you think I'm intelligent after this, you can think again, you can find the same definition on wikipedia. Anyway, this doesn't really have much to do with black holes. I'm going to be reviewing Blackhole2 by sto4. Sto is quite well known for his amazing puzzle platformers, and he is a well known staff member on both the MS and the forums, but what about his RPG skills? Sure, we've seen a few of them, but not as much as the puzzle games. However, the other RPG's he's created have set high standards. I'm honestly expecting quite a lot: good gameplay, scenery, platforming. Everything. Well, not everything, but... Well, you get what I mean. Anyway, on with the show!

Review

When I took a look at the thumbnail, it gave me an easy expectation of the game. It easily told me that it's an RPG (duh) and it also looks like most of his RPG's: dark and ominous. However, that isn't exactly the main focus of the game. Anyway, the thumbnail in my opinion was aesthetically pleasing. It easily shows us that sto can work well with scenery, and because of this, I felt the urge to just play it straight away.

The main focus of the game is pretty much just a tribute. It shows blackhole2's stories and journey. But how was this well explained in the game? Well, let's start with the gameplay. Blackhole2 consisted of puzzles and quite a bit of action (jeez, sto, who do you think blackhole2 is?) With the puzzles, you pretty much had to make precise movements or the whole game will mess up for you, like all of sto's puzzle games. I had to look at the walkthrough, see what I had to do, go back to the game, mess it all up, start again, and that was all I was doing the whole time I was playing. This made the games difficulty increase. Also, I felt like there were quite a lot of enemies (or should I say too much) which, again, increased the difficulty even more! Unfortunately, the difficulty decreased the fun that I had while playing Blackhole2. I eventually had to watch the whole of the walkthrough, since I just couldn't get anywhere.

Moving away from the bad points, let's talk about some good points. The scenery is one of them. Sto4 obviously took some time into creating a great aesthetically pleasing game, by adding some great decorations, which are pretty much used in every RPG you find. However, I think it would've looked better if the whole game wasn't pretty much black the whole time. The scenery probably would have stood out more. Additionally, I think it could have also included a wider range of tiles and tile backgrounds. But I have to hand it to him: he was pretty much able to use everything that was available to use for scenery, which is quite grand. So overall, I think this game was aesthetically pleasing, even though there were those few flaws.

The placements were probably one of the greatest things about this game. They were placed for particular reasons, so that the puzzles would all work, and the action sequences including would be effective. And, as you would've guessed it, they all worked. However, the problem I had with the placements is that there were quite a lot of enemies. As I said before, it made the game just too hard for my liking.

Pros:

Placements

Scenery

Action

Puzzles

Cons:

Difficulty

Difficulty

DIFFICULTY

DIFFICULTY

Ratings

Conclusion

So, overall, I give this game a 3/5. It was a decent game with good (yet precise) puzzles and decent action, and was aesthetically pleasing, but it was really difficult. I'd say it isn't feature worthy. Fun is one of the main factors in a game, and this wasn't the most fun game.

Thanks for reading! You'll see me next time reviewing Brotherhood by Thunderboom!