When I first saw something online about Vroom in the Night Sky, I was excited. "Cool!" I thought, "A kart racer with cute magical girls!" Unfortunately for me, it was not cool, it was not a kart racer, and the magical girls aren't all that cute. I mean, they're okay, but the polygons are really rudimentary for a system with the Switch's strength. This was, without a doubt, the worst €8 I've ever spent (I downloaded it on my French account). The game is broken into eight levels, each as boring as the last. You can access the first five levels just by clearing the previous levels. The last three levels require the purchase of specific bikes in the shop with Stardust that's exceptionally boring and annoying to gather, and these magical bikes cost way more stardust than they're worth. Each level plays like the ring levels in Superman 64 except easy with no difficulty whatsoever. You have to fly through a series of star rings to unlock the exit. That's it. That's the whole objective. Halfway through the level, a rival magical girl will appear. This doesn't really add anything to gameplay, however, as your rival does nothing to interfere with your completion of the level. All she does is fly around and steal stardust, but that's not really a threat because it keeps respawning. You have finite fuel, but it drains EXTREMELY slowly (I've never gotten below 90%), and you can always fly to the middle of the map to refuel. The whole game is just extraordinarily boring. But the visuals are redeeming, right? No. No they're not. It honestly looks like it's an upscaled WiiWare game. The textures are so basic that they're almost not textured at all, and the polygon models are extraordinarily bland. "Uninspired" might be the most appropriate word for the game's visual style. The worst part, however, other than the boring gameplay, is the translation. You see crap like "Are you the first time to play this game?" "Attention to Drowsy Riding! OK?" "It is a sky. It is a completely sky." I know that the developer is a small studio with an extremely limited budget, but surely there was a better option than Google Translate. This reads like a C student's high school project. It's a minor gripe, I realize, as it doesn't actually affect gameplay (what little there is), but it's just sloppy work. Vroom in the Night Sky is the epitome of disappointing Switch launch games. Even Red Steel back on the Wii was a better, more robust, and more enjoyable launch experience than this. The gameplay feels more like a pre-alpha demo than a full release game, and the visuals look like a Unity tutorial. The sound design is bare minimum, and the translation is on par with that of a high school foreign language class, and not top of the class. Avoid this game. Truthfully, I enjoyed this game less than I enjoyed The Letter on Wii U, and that's saying something. My Rating - F |
I'm a teacher.And I like to play video games. I like to collect video games. I like to talk about video games, and I like to write about video games. During the day, I teach high school history; during the night, I spend my spare time gaming. Then I write about it. Archives
April 2024
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