Hey! It’s a video game review! A thing that I sometimes do.
Unlike many of you out there I have NOT been playing The Cat Game. Everyone is writing about The Cat Game right now so I opted to zig while others were having a good time zagging and I have paid the price.
I have been playing Krut: The Mythic Wings and there’s no easy way to put this…it’s not great.
Generally the method in which review games come to me involves me getting a text from the EiC which amounts to “Would you like to review X?” along with a YouTube trailer. I’ll watch the trailer and as long as it looks interesting I’ll agree to it. There are legitimately too many cool indie games out there that I otherwise would not be aware of or get a chance to play so nine times out of ten I’ll agree to it.
Plus we didn’t get offered a review code for The Cat Game. BUT ENOUGH ABOUT THAT.
The trailer for Krut The Mythic Wings showed a vibrant, side-scrolling platformer/shooter which seemed like something I would enjoy. As a gamer of a certain age I know what I like and this type of game I had played a fair amount of back on the NES and Sega Genesis and that was precisely the game’s downfall for me.
A more charitable reviewer would praise the game’s retro aesthetics and how it harkens back to a simpler time of video gaming. For review purposes, I played through the first two levels of Krut The Mythic Wings and found them to be almost identical aside from reskinned enemies and backgrounds.
If I’m being honest, I almost didn’t make it beyond the game’s tutorial. The game froze and crashed on me the first time I attempted to boot it up on my PS5 but behaved a little better on the second attempt. In the minimal research I did on the game before playing I read that it’s based on a 2018 Thai animated movie which in turn is based on Thai mythology. Not that you would know any of that when first booting up the game.
At the title screen you’re presented with a bare bones options menu after which there’s a literal ton of expository dialog boxes. There is zero voice acting in the game, likely so the game can be marketed to as many regions as possible, and I skipped through countless dialog boxes before getting to the actual gameplay.
As for the tutorial mentioned above it presented me with “combos” along the lines of “Press X. Press XX. Press XXX. Press XXXX.” After repeatedly failing to nail a combo I was ready to throw in the towel or shoot my TV Elvis-style, but nevertheless I persisted.
The actual game didn’t fare much better. The platforming was retro insomuch that it was imprecise and the second level offered dreaded blind jumps and cheap deaths galore. Upon beating a boss you’re rewarded with some in-game skill point and, guess what, more dialog boxes. Krut The Mythic Wings was also a f-ing grind and not in a fun way. Due to shoddy hit detection I was unable to connect with any of the flying enemies on either level (admittedly, I could be bad at video games) and missing out on those points made it so I wasn’t able to purchase the character upgrades needed to really be able to compete in the game.
I expected a lot more from Krut The Mythic Wings beyond just a tarted up SuperNES or iOS game.
