![]() Platforming is very fidgety, the stealth aspects are mostly nonexistent and disposable, and whatever puzzles do emerge are so straightforward they feel like mere padding and distraction. What’s unfortunate is that little else in the game seemed to have received a comparable amount of polish or consideration. It’s clear that studio Pixelopus prioritized the painting mechanics during Concrete Genie’s development which, of course, was a very wise decision. You can even end up with a whole squad of genies bumbling around each level, asking you to paint objects and rewarding you with special paint that eradicates corruption-like blockades. Once they’ve been created, they can follow you along walls through the entirety of an area, and three different base-types of genies offer different elemental powers that factor into occasional puzzles. The act of creating a new genie with whatever accouterments you like - go ahead and give them five spiraled horns, three tails, and a mustache, if you like - seems like it would get old, but their beaming big-toothed smile as they shimmer to life is always a genuine delight. The first few times you use the brush may elicit a gasp, with each modest stroke creating a buzzing collage of luminescent figures. To be fair, some of this lack of tension is due to the focus on the painting itself. Lacking any real threat, the only possible tension emergences in the occasional moments of confusion as to what to do next, something never ably resolved by an inscrutable map screen. This either leads to a stumble or a fail-state, neither of which meaningfully slows things down - even falling from a distant height or into a body of water prompts something of a “death” animation, but then instantly teleports you back to where you once were. The bullies from Concrete Genie’s intro pop up throughout your travels, and they will often try their best to catch you, rob you of your brush, or slingshot you off of precarious perches. It’s one of several inelegant affordances to be found in the overall game, which tries to merge stealth, platforming, puzzle-solving, exploration, storytelling, and free-wheeling creativity into one unavoidably jumbled stew. Weirdly, this is never really explained and doesn’t quite make sense within the fiction, and just seems like a game-y system to prevent the rampant drive to cover every single available wall in the town, which might have grown tiresome. Strangely, merely drawing on walls alone doesn’t fulfill completion of a Denska zone, and you’re meant to mainly paint walls behind strings of light bulbs, which illuminates them to track progress. Potato Head fashion, and the different genie components work much the same way as the rest of the palette forms. Rather than painting these pieces line by line, players get a palette of different forms by retrieving each shredded sketchbook page, letting them paint impressive rainbows, streams of flowering vines, animated butterflies, and more.Īnd, of course, there are the genies themselves, who are created in something of a Mr. In practice, this means that virtually any broad surface can be painted on, either by using the analog stick or through the default motion controls - for such an important mechanic, it’s notable that either method works well. Now armed with a magical paintbrush, Ash returns to the Denska mainland to throw glowing living paintings onto its canvas, re-enlivening the town one wall at a time. Related: The Angry Birds Movie 2 VR: Under Pressure Review - Hectic 4-Player Fun Contending with an intimidating crew of roving bullies who frequently make his life hell, his journal is stolen, shredded, and its pages scattered to the wind, before he’s chased to a distant lighthouse where one of his created “genies” comes to life. Main character Ash is a young artist busily sketching his imagination into a journal, which mostly consists of named monster characters with bulbous furry bodies and beaming smiles. Denska is a dimly-lit port-side town that has clearly seen better days, condemned by a lack of industry and a kind of ennui infused into its ramshackle shanties and warehouses.
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