May 26, 2017 World To The West is fun little adventure puzzler that harkens back to the early Zelda games. A gentle title that's very pleasant and entertaining without being too taxing and stressful and a. May 05, 2017 World to the West Guides seph.au's Guides This item has been removed from the community because it violates Steam Community & Content Guidelines.
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World to the West (Switch) Review
by Neal Ronaghan - January 14, 2018, 9:26 pm PST
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Be sure to leave no totem behind in this big Zelda-like adventure.
The very structure of World to the West emphasizes the ambition of this sophomore effort from Teslagrad developers Rain Games. The expansive world resembles that of a 2D Zelda and the chapter-based structure in which heroes and settings are introduced slowly but surely helps build up the world and the importance of the four heroes joining forces. The top-down action game is filled with clever puzzles and enjoyable challenges, but a few issues hamper the experience from becoming a Nindie classic.
The basic gameplay involves solving puzzles in a large world as one of four different characters. Each one feels unique, complete with their own attacks and traversal methods that unlock over the first half of the game. Lumina the Teslamancer can teleport and shoot electricity. Teri the Mindbender can control enemies and crack a whip-like scarf. Knaus is a tiny lad who can dig holes, crawl in tight spaces, and ice skate. Lord Clonington is a big strongman who can pummel foes and climb walls. At the beginning, you can only control the characters alone or in pairs. It isn’t until roughly halfway through that you can control all four at once, but since switching between characters can slow the pace down dramatically, that might be for the best.
While the world is intricately designed to have secrets that test each of the character’s abilities in a number of ways, switching between characters can be overly laborious. You can only switch when at checkpoint/warp totems, but even when you’re there, you might not be able to switch to that character at that totem. Instead, you’ll warp to whatever totem you last left that hero. Making it worse, each character has to visit every totem in order to warp there. Big chunks of my playtime were spent ferrying the heroes from point A to point B so that way they could all reach different checkpoints and areas. That kind of repeated travel can be a good way to make sure no stone is left unturned with each character, but when you’re going through the same grassy area for the fourth time, it gets old. Some puzzles would be cheapened and nonexistent if you could simply switch characters at any time, but the way it is implemented into World to the West slows the sometimes enjoyable pace down to a standstill.
That sets up World to the West to be more effective in its linear segments than its second-half open-world moments. The character-switching irritants are small potatoes when on focused paths with only one or two heroes. Everything becomes a little more convoluted when juggling between all four, especially when you could have them spread out all over the world map in your travails. The bright spots of the portions when you have all four available are when you’re in closer quarters, like the dungeons in the late game, and the puzzles are more condensed and clear. It’s when seeking unlockables or journeying through the sizable map that the separation of the characters becomes more trying.
The exploration woes are especially the pits because the puzzles spread out through World to the West are good and novel, making fine use of the combination of different abilities in unique ways. They are at war with the monotony of seeing the same locales four times over. The fact that I got tired of wandering this expressive and elegant world truly highlights the problems. The art, even if mired by repetition, is gorgeous, evoking a classical hand-drawn cartoon aesthetic even in its 3D design that runs totally fine on Switch.
While I’m ultimately coming away from World to the West more disappointed than I expected, I admire the expanse and ambition. It’s a gorgeous game with some delightful, puzzling moments. This is still a cool game, just one with some flaws that hold it back from being exemplary.
Summary
Pros
- Brilliant hand-drawn aesthetic
- Neat puzzle variety
- Varied playable characters
Cons
- Emphasis on repetition
- Problematic character switching
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Game Profile
Worldwide Releases
World to the West | |
Release | Jan 18, 2018 |
Publisher | Rain Games |
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DelosIncorporated.com
Location is a key factor in HBO’s newest show Westworld. Deep-pocketed guests are whisked back in time to the Old West, where they can carry out their wildest, most savage fantasies on the park’s seemingly endless number of robotic hosts. The show spends half of its time aboveground, with the other half focused on the puppet-master characters behind the scenes, watching and ensuring that the hosts exist day-to-day in the predetermined loops that guide their programming. They make the robot hosts and pull the strings from within a highly secretive, 14-level lab that, according to the show’s DelosIncorporated.com viral site, is located in the side of a gigantic mountain.
While the Delos site does offer a small glimpse into the functions of each level, hardcore fans will want a lot more info. Luckily, we have you covered.
Let’s descend down the levels of Westworld, shall we?
Mesa Gold
Mesa Gold is a “decompression chamber” where guests go to stay after they’re lived out their violent delights in the park; it also seems like the employees hang out there to take in the beautiful views.
Executive Offices
Dr. Robert Ford is such a baller/weirdo that he even has his own personal host piano player. Unfortunately, the rest of his office is somehow even creepier, whether it’s the host face molds behind him or all the animal skulls scattered about. Dude is anything but subtle.
Executive Living Quarters
Head honchos like Bernard get some swanky digs while rotated into their Westworld tour. Their living areas are straight out of an Ikea catalogue.
Control Room
This is where it all goes down. The Control Room is replete with an interactive map so programming and operations heads can make sure everything is shipshape … until it isn’t.
Administrative Offices
We haven’t seen any real administrative offices yet besides the Episode 3 jaunt into Ford’s personal Westworld space. Considering Theresa Cullen is always skulking around everyone else’s offices, we at least need to see where she gets things done down the line.
Narrative & Design
We haven’t seen too much of this space, but Sizemore’s failed new narrative “Odyssey on Red River” — which Ford denounces almost immediately — is enough for us. Better to stay in the part instead of potential new variations on it behind the scenes.
Behaviour Lab/Diagnostics
Here’s where we’ve spent most of our time, and god knows we’ve seen more than enough naked robot butts sitting on stools than necessary. The cold, open, and desolate nature of this space really contrasts the lush landscapes of the park. Production designer Zack Grobler told Inverse, that “the design of the lab had to be clinical,” and that “with the biological and the medical world, you also start to have to get cleanliness and you have to get medical facility has to be quite clean.”
Manufacturing
The marketing of the show is built around the Vitruvian Man-like basic structure of a Westworld host, which is covered in the milky substance that gives them their form. Mother’s milk is too good of a metaphor in Westworld to pass up, but it makes for an interesting design detail. VFX head Jay Worth told Inverse it was made of a glue and water substance.
Livestock Management
In Episode 2, we got to see where all the quote-unquote “dead” hosts go after they’ve been dispatched by trigger-happy guests, and it isn’t pretty. Maeve discovers that her fellow automatons are rounded up, hosed off, and spiffed up before being put back into service.
Archives
We dont really know exactly what the Archives refer to just yet, and maybe we’ll find out in future episodes, but we imagine they’d look like the labyrinthine escalator structures that connect all of the levels of the Mesa Gold facility.
Arrivals Monorail Terminal
Grobler told Inverse that in designing the train that brings people to Westworld, he was influenced by Elon Musk’s idea for the Hyperloop, as well as magnetic levitation trains.
Old Disused Facilities
We also haven’t seen the extent of the disused facilities yet, though talk of an incident from 30 years ago points to the idea that Westworld has abandoned previous incarnations before. The scene from the premiere episode where Bernard is lead to the lower levels of Mesa Gold by Ashley Stubbs and his security force shows an abandoned visitor’s center. What else is the structure hiding?
Cold Storage
The lowest and saddest level of the park. Something tells us the fleet of decommissioned hosts here might not stay put for long.