#11 They Are Not Crystals My Friend.

Review by theknockout on Wednesday, August 27th 2014
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Click to play Physics crystals 2

Physics crystals 2 is a game created by yugioh77

Game: Physics Crystals 2

Creator: Yugioh77

Platform: Physics, Puzzles, Graphics (Otherwise known as PPG.)


Introduction:


What's this? Theknockout reviewing a game? Indeed it is, I understand it's been a long time since I reviewed a game, the last game I reviewed was Virus X I believed which was what? 3 odd months ago? So, why did I pick up the pen (or open the notepad if you have to be technological) again? Well, long story short I decided to make a push for Editor at last, no this isn't a Editor App if that's the impression you are getting. I'm merely getting back into reviewing games such as this to provide sufficient evidence for when it does come to that. Now, enough blabbering on, this game, I happened to find through Yugioh's profile ironically. I originally checked the new feature of auctions to find him there, his game up in auction was decent so I went to his profile and found this. Despite being as dated as 2011 I went on. From the thumbnail I got the sense of either a somewhat adventure theme or if that wasn't the case, it was just mere scene change. Well, I think that's a long enough introduction for now; let's get on with the deep stuff.


Review:


World 1. House of horrors, how charming what a delightful bright start to the game indeed. In a nutshell, what the concept seemed to be was simple: Match two crystals of the same colour to score. By match two crystals I mean literally push them into each other. That simple? Nope, on top of that you get charming little saws stalking you everywhere you go followed by what looked like a alien/robot/red-eyed thing/Vampire/Whatever you want to call it also stalking you everywhere. Yes, so it's not all that easy. But what was rather impressive is how smoothly these "crystals" (which are really just coloured balls but shh don't yell Yugi I said that or he'll send Darkness Neosphere to attack me. (That's a Yu-Gi-Oh reference by the way.) In all seriousness though, the control of the crystals are pretty smooth, the collisions with the walls was very neat as well as the crystals coming to an almost sudden stop when you release the pressure from them, this made the crystals so much easier to actually move around the canvas making the level you may be doing at the time a lot more easier. The enemies and such are also very neatly moving, the enemies that follow you (or stalkers as I'll refer them to to make it easier) have very smooth cornering and angle adjustment. Let alone that, the spawners that spawn the stalkers are to a reasonable frequency, it's not too fast and not too slow, this way the difficulty sits in the middle but to the hard side reasonably. However the size of some of them could have been shrunk slightly in some places.



A peculiar thing about Physics Crystals 2 is the change of scenery, it was most intriguing, as I've already mentioned we start in "The House of Horror" which is well; a eerie opening I think you will agree. But then the next level made me interested. "Colour Blast". My initial thoughts at this point is mainly "Well where did that come from." It just didn't really make sense to me, a dark eerie feeling to a "Ooh let's get rabbits and dance around" feeling it just didn't really work very well together. Then...he did it again, lava land. So now we have went from a dark eerie feeling to, "Ooh let's get rabbits and dance" feeling to a "Omg it's volcano, run" feeling. Then it goes onto a Jungle, I'm not going to bother describing that feeling though. But I just generally find it very weird how the whole game seems to be a up and down atmosphere, I don't know if it was effect as personally I didn't quite like it I prefer a game to have one atmosphere the whole time or at least a gradual change in RPG purposes. However the positive side of things now: the music for each level was very fitting, miserable, joyous, frantic ect. Despite the matches with scenery and music, the changes itself didn't quite work well. All in all I'd say that the atmosphere changing is somewhat down on the negative side however does show promise to a good feature but needs some tweaking.


The third topic of today's review is the overall general placement of the blocks, "crystals", and enemies. The general placement itself is what made the game so difficult in my opinion, the spawners were placed in rather convenient places, by convenient I mean places where they can target you relatively easy making them track you down quicker which indeed does make the game a lot harder in whole. Why does it make it harder? Well, since you have these "stalkers" on your back the whole time, it requires actual agility to stay away while pushing around these crystals. For example in level 3, when you spawn you spawn with the lava boss I guess you can call him following you around swiftly, while he's following you you have two sets of crystals to match. This is exactly what I'm talking about when I say agility. However there was a fairly negative side to this, these stalkers can actually push the crystals as well which is kinda a let down for some as it messes up the crystals position. But am I like those who don't like it? Nope, in all honesty I really like this feature, it doesn't necessarily lead to puzzles but it does increase the levels of agility and control to make the game harder. Basically, it's a positive feature to me. Shall we move on to the mighty section we like to call ratings now? Scratch that we'll do it in a minute.


Pros:

Gameplay

Placement

(Concept)


Cons:

(Concept) - You'll understand why it's in brackets in a minute.

"Up and Down" atmosphere.



Ratings:


Ratings today will be categorized into the following topics:


Gameplay

Concept

Placement

Difficulty


Gameplay - I'm going to go ahead and say 8/10 - The gameplay was indeed to a high standard with the close impacts ect but the fact that hazards could move the crystals knocked it down a little.


Concept - 5/10 - For it's time (2011) the concept was new. But we're in in 2014 now right? Well these days the concept is awfully simple and bland, it could do with a bit of lighting up let's say. Perhaps add puzzles? More than one playable character? It just needs a little spark.


Placement - 9/10 - Sorry Yugi but nothing can be perfect :)


Difficulty - Eh, let's go with 6/10 - It does indeed start off difficult however it does become much easier after a couple of revolutions of playing.


Total rating: 28/40 - 7/10


Feature Worthy: For it's time then yes, it was feature worthy but now in these days I don't think it's quite up to scratch (I'm not suggesting unfeaturing it of course, it was good in it's time so it deserves to be there as a landmark.) But it just needs a tad more creativity to it and a more followable atmosphere change just to pick it up a notch to put it into feature standards as well as maybe another level or two.


Final Conclusion: Overall, I found Physics Crystals 2 to be a rather good game all in all, some very nice aspects with the odd one or two negative features. I would recommend it to others but not quite ready for a feature if it was recently made.


Over and Knocked out. ;)