#13 *Sigh* Cornered Again.

Corner is a game created by lordeldar

Game: Corner

Creator: Lorderldar

Type: PPG

Intro:

Urghhhh cornered again...oh...I see you have arrived to this wonderful world of 5-10 minutes of reading this fantastic review on Corner by Lordeldar. Before I start I must say; I don't really see the point of calling this game "Corner." I mean, the only reference to the word corner is a...let's get onto that later shall we, now now, I don't want to spoil things for you. Anyway, as you know; I'm the typical judgemental guy that likes to look at the thumbnails. But honestly; I couldn't tell a thing about the game before I began (except it involves corners for all you little sherlocks out there.) Most of the time when I look at a thumbnail I can generally grasp the concept pretty quickly, however this time was different. From my perspective at least, it seemed to basically be a canvas with Lord in the middle and 2 grey lords either side encased in the corner. Well, ain't that a lovely start. I hate to whine and whine and whine on forever. Let's start talking positive. We all know Lordeldar surely? No? Well catch up with Sploder life, let's get started.

Review:

Woot, I died on the first level go me, I start the level ram myself into a wall game over. It took me one stroke of a key to understand the concept. In a nutshell; Lordeldar suffers a "freak accident" who knows what it is, and suffered brain damage apparently. I tried to help him :(, that's aside the point; ahead of this "brain damage" we are told that Lord is slowly recovering however one section of his poor brain is still suffering (the corner) and he cannot control it. Well, ain't that a dynamic story, a guy suffers brain damage and goes mental, that's a new one. This is the point where I actually understood the game. After researching the story up once more it occurred to me that this grey Lordeldar was in fact this section of the brain otherwise known as the corner I assumed. But I'm sure you're asking "Well then, what is wrong with the "corner" then. Well, let's move on and all shall be revealed.

The corner, is trapped in a corner ironically, however you have control over it unlike said in the storyline which is kind of a con to me how the gameplay itself contradicts the story by giving you control of the corner in this game. Either way this corner is sure a tricky little thing. It's deadly I tell you; but obviously you have no idea what I'm talking about when I say this so I guess it's only logical I go into further detail of the concept. The basic layout of most levels is a typical platforming stage with a few hazards and everything a typical PPG has. With an addition, the corner is sat in the corner surrounded by red platforms (hazards) and blue platforms (safe platforms). Why is this significant? You have to guide Lordeldar to the coin located somewhere within the level at the same time as maintaining control over this corner, seems easy? No, touch red, you die, doesn't matter how, doesn't matter where, doesn't matter who with. You die, game over, kapeesh? Good. But one thing that really disappointed me kind of; is two of the levels in particular that just ruined the flow of the game. All but two of these levels are purely dedicated to this puzzle aspect; and then there's these two random platforming levels with no corner. I mean, you have an actual story in the game, and you go out of your way; contradict it and make irrelevant levels? It makes no sense to me to be brutally honest. I mean, the game itself; sure, it's good, but when it comes to level design, it's illogical.

Do I find it difficult? Well, yes, I do. I personally find it difficult to keep track of the position of both Lord and the corner simultaneously, which is the prime thing you must be doing throughout these levels. It's one thing that is vital to beating the game; let alone figure out the game. But on another negative aspect; there was one point where there was an attempt to increase the difficulty but strangely I found that level slightly easier than the others. Whether this was just me or my imagination was an obscure thought to me at the time, but that's just my opinion, yours may be different. I found the overall difficulty itself to be well maintained throughout with reasonable lifts, no drops generally excluding my thoughts on the last level of course. What I mean by this is that the levels didn't just go from "Oh, hey this is pretty easy", to..."Oh man, this is so hard I'm going to rage quit so bad!" That's a pure example of what a game should definitely NOT be like; if it is, well, it needs fixed big style. Difficulty in game should remain controlled, increasing every level or 2 at a slow, maintained pace to keep the flow of the game going well. All in all; the game was reasonably well thought and planned out difficulty wise from my viewpoint.

One thing I may describe some levels as is frustrating; yes I am aware I'm linking back to difficulty again but I just want to stress my point here. I know I'm contradicting myself a bit here but I feel like the difficulty did take on sudden rise at one point but not too major. One level mid-way through the game adds a time limit, a rather snappy one of 00:16 to be precise. And the map design didn't help much either; it was fairly crammed together to un-necessary amounts in the corner, literally, once you're in the right spot to be you have next to no freedom to move about to guide Lord at all, it's basically a matter of jump jump jump and do nothing situation. Meanwhile you have Lord trying to jump of platforms that break at a touch. I feel these two situations really don't go well together at all.

Moving away from the difficulty now and adding a sense of creativity into the review. The creativity on the whole was a tad bland, when I see this I mean that the extra features used were blatantly and clearly recycled from old games, such as breaking platforms, disappearing platforms, seen it all before. And some things were very basic to duplicate to me (and I'm bad at the PPG), it was as simple as add another player; I mean, can it get any more basic? "Oh, I ran out of ideas, let's add another player." But! Don't get a bad idea of it here, the actual quality of their usage was very good and effective, they were used in clever ways to give the game some extra spikes I guess you can say; it just made the game a tad more enjoyable in the end.

Did the game get boring? Simple as. No. It didn't get boring towards the end like some games do; it kept my interest at least, I personally feel the real cause for this is the smooth flow of the game, it's pretty smooth all in all, there isn't any bumpy rocky roads in the actual enjoyment. One level was fairly enjoyable, the next was; and so forth. The extra features were also added at significant times when the game did seem like it was drifting off a bit. But hey, that's just your typical everyday Lordeldar.

Pros:

- Flow

- Gameplay

- General usage of ideas.

Cons:

- Went off the storyline at a couple points.

- Lack of new discovered components.

Ratings:

For this review I will be judging:

Gameplay

Difficulty

Flow Of The Game

Creativity

Gameplay: 7/10 - The game was overall very enjoyable and well planned out however I kind of felt the gameplay at a slight dip due to the odd levels that kind of ruined the flow.

Difficulty: 9/10 - The game itself is rather easy, but the difficulty of the game is controlled very well; there was the odd minor dip, but it wasn't so much that it was significant and it didn't affect the flow at all.

Flow: 6/10 - Like mentioned before, it flowed well however the odd levels that went off the story ruined the flow; not destroyed it however.

Creativity: 6/10 - The game does have many recycled components however used in an effective way to keep it's score from dipping below 5.

Total: 28/40 - 7/10

Feature Worthy:

Eh, not in my opinion; this is mainly due to the lack of features, I would have liked to see a spark of creativity as well as keeping the flow of the game fully maintained and sticking to the plot of the story to a good degree.

Conclusion:

All in all, I must say Corner is a fairly stand out game; not an extreme one however, it is good enough to get some attention on it however. I would recommend giving this game a shot and seeing what you think of the game.

-Over and knocked out ;)