Utomah

I expected another jaunt due to the similar atmosphere of my previous review, but I was pleasantly surprised to find such a fully featured boss rush of sorts. I'm sure that I had a slightly more difficult fight than intended due to the radial weapon aiming truncated to the keyboard's ortho-diagonals. Despite the healthy dose of difficulty I might have liked to see how far it could have been pushed by removing bullet time, but I would also inevitably have to break out my controller. The final boss succumbs to a class trope of sorts, that being the chase sequence finale, although it manages to distinguish itself by being an actual multi-stage fight in addition to your everyday rising lava conundrum. The game is a grapple focused Nerve mazer that basically averages out to more beater gameplay due to its length. In light of this I found it quite odd that dodging was taught in the second level, since it acts as more of a tool of traversal rather than combat. The speed and flow of movement is perfectly satisfying, and between grapples, levers, fast-falling, and wall-running, the levels leave a bit more to be desired, yet I consider level design to be the hardest subgroup by far nor have I seen very many DigiGames to have "made it," especially concerning 2d designs. The enemies might have done better about being a nuisance in certain areas, but I also appreciate them being the set dressing they mostly turn out to be. Grappling in Metroid is very tenuously applied to traversal in the series, acting mostly as a glorified missile door. Super Metroid has select few rooms that utilize its rigid functionality, but with that rigidity comes a greater satisfaction in mastering its control. Webbed essentially takes the mechanic and isolates it along with architectural physics puzzles, where a mastery of this single item is brought to its fullest depth within scope. Terraria might be the closest analogue that shares a propensity for combat, although the arenas are constructed by the player as opposed to the more unique set pieces of a developer. Utomah gets an S for Symbiotic Zero Sum.