Review - CROSSING SOULS - It could have been so much better!
In a way, it's a bit normal. The best music and movies ever made, the magic of the starting computer era, and the more positive people, who were more focusing on having fun than arguing with each other over politic!
And especially people who were THERE at that time (me first!) are very nostalgic of this era.
Strangely though...
This adventure game, which pretends to recreate all of this, feels like it was made by people who weren't born yet.
And it shows...
A GAME ABOUT THE 80s MADE BY MILLENIALS?
Summer of 1986.
The story takes place in the small town of Tahunga(apparently fictional), California.
Five kids make a gruesome discovery after an electrical storm!
A dead man, clutching a mysterious artifact, which they'll find out soon to be the "Duat Stone", which will allow them to travel between reality and afterlife, and then to talk with the ghosts inhabiting it!
Unfortunately, a mysterious organization WANTS that stone, which they plan to use to unleash the "One Day World War"!
("(...)recruiting thoughsands of dead warriors and soldiers from all over history.")
Our five friends are not gonna let that happen, and using only their wits and unique skills, will try to save their home town from being crushed by the diabolical Major Oh Rus!
Unfortunately, the story isn't crafted extremely well.
The whole thing feels like it's been written by millenials who pretend they know the 80s.
So that makes the 80s look quite cheesy to say the least, which they WERE NOT.
Welcome to stereotype city!
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| "This time, John Wayne does not walk off in the sunset with Grace Kelly." "that was Gary Cooper, asshole". |
It's difficult to give you examples, you'll have to play the game and see for yourself.
But I guess I could say that when you play this game, instead of feeling like you're watching a 80s movie like Terminator, it feels more like watching a 2010s remake with aging actors who still repeat their most popular one-liners to try to stay popular, which looks embarrassing...(love you Arnie, sorry!)
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| So, you say that I should feed them after midnight and give them a bath afterwards, right? Okay!😊 |
It's interesting to mention that the game tries to recreate a 80s MOVIE, not 80s real-life.
But either way, it doesn't feel 80s that much. I'm talking as somebody was was born in er...
Well, I won't tell, but let's just say that I saw a LOT from the 80s. 😅
And I was there when Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom came out.
But anyway, the game feels far from good old adventure movies like The Goonies.
Then again, I have never seen ANY game which made me think of these old movies or shows. It wouldn't be so hard though.
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| I wish Matt tried to open it and it would work like the box from "Hellraiser"...(Click to see something very disturbing that will give you nightmares forever, and then thank me.😅) |
You know what the problem is?
Unlike what it pretends to be, this game actually makes FUN of the 80s.
It's not an ode to the 80s, it's more like low comedy disguised as a tribute.
And I didn't laugh or even smile one time while playing the whole game.
Everything that made the 80s is made fun of, and stereotypes are legions, overusing half-baked tropes, resulting in a game which is becoming its own caricature.
And what I just wrote unfortunately applies to the VAST majority of so-called "homage" movies and TV shows about the 80s nowadays.
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| My favorite place, the arcade room! Too bad that's when I realized the gameplay would be boring... |
It might sound condescending, but too many young game developers/filmmakers think that using a few one-liners and clichés from the 80s are enough to make a "80s movie", or "80s game".
This is SO far from the reality, when in fact, most 80s movie were relying on a great script, incredible actors, and totally original ideas. Most recent games only use what has been done already a thousand times.
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| Chris: "Eeer hello lady! Say, I'm being pursued by an evil organization, so... Can I hide in your leotard? No? How about your shiny pantyhose then?" |
Finally, I'll talk about this more in the graphics part, but this trend about thinking that the 80s were all about pink neon lights is getting tiring.
I didn't even see neon lights back then. lol
If anything, the 80s were MUCH more old-school than what people think, but strangely, only the flashy pink lights and harsh synth tones have survived the test of time.
I get a much better 80s "feeling" while playing a beat'em up like "Bud Spencer & Terence Hill - Slaps and Beans"! lol
Well, there aren't THAT many stereotypes in the game though.
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| Hmmm... The main guy has a baseball bat... Closest friend is blonde with glasses... Then there's the girl... Kinda looks like Earthbound, no?😉 |
- Chris is the typical all-rounder character. He can climb, but has low health.
- Math can hover above the ground for a bit.
- Charlie is my favorite when it comes to fighting! Love her whip weapon!
- Joe is the strongest! He can move heavy objects, but is slow-moving.
- Kevin is er... Hey Kevin, what can you do?
On a side note, the characters don't look like that much 80s either.
Their hair color, clothes, even their way of speaking...
Which doesn't prevent them from being likeable though!
They kinda make me think of that little group of friends in "IT". ha ha
(YES, the one from 1990, not the useless remake! Get it on Amazon while you can!)
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| Mike shows his friends his favorite book, "how to perform a cunnilingus on an obese transgender in 35 steps". |
I always loved the first part of that movie when I was a kid, and I wanted so much to be one of them!🤗
But I didn't feel this way in this game, maybe because character development is lacking...😞
GAMEPLAY - NARRATIVE EXPERIENCE MIXED WITH FLAWED PLATFORMING AND BORING ACTION
Well,I didn't find it much fun.
Buuuut... It was either my fault for not reading about it, or the developer's fault for not communicating well enough about what the game was about!
See, I was kinda expecting an A-RPG or platformer for some reason, or maybe something like a Metroidvania game without fighting, with lots of puzzles, and only a bit of story...
I'm sorry, but this is what the trailer made it look like to me!
But so far, it's been pretty much the total opposite, a purely narrative experience.
I'm exaggerating a bit, but come on... My experience has been like this:
- 70% of dialogues/cutscenes (just press a button to skip, that's all you can do)
- 20% of exploring (maybe my favorite part... lol)
- 10% of actual interactive gameplay (platforming, fighting, shooting, puzzles)
Towards the end of the game, there are more action scenes though...
Unfortunately, they're pretty much as boring as the rest of the gameplay.
As I consider now this game to be a narrative experience, I think it would have been nice to be able to SKIP THE ACTION SCENES instead of the conversations. lol
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| Recognize the three movie posters and win a kiss from Lily!😘 |
I don't have anything against adventure games, since I love old-school point-and-click games, and many times, this game feels like a point-and-click game except you can control the character freely, which is cool, really.
Only ONE big problem though: unlike point-and-click games, so far, I didn't face ANY puzzles/mind games whatsoever. Or at least NOT what I consider to be REAL puzzles...
I had to deal with much more complex puzzles in "Iconoclasts", for example.
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| Puzzles are usually very easy and won't require any thinking. |
How about the platforming?
Enjoying the slippery and laggy controls, it gets increasingly worse as you progress, requiring you to rapidly switch back and forth between characters to perform TIMED JUMPS on platforms which can disappear suddenly, WHILE avoiding roaming searchlights.
And yes, just one tiny mistake will reset the event.
So now the relaxing narrative experience turns into a hardcore platformer? Okaaay...
So, this game has very few interactive gameplay elements, barely any mind games, VERY flawed platforming, and apparently no Metroidvania elements either... What a weird mix. I feel like developers wanted to try to put everything in just one game, without getting one element right.
What's left? A somewhat interesting story, that is, if you're into "80s wannabes".
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| Quincy Queen? Is that a mix of Quincy Jones and...Prince? lol |
You'll have to make sure you talk to everybody, because sometimes it triggers events, or enable quests, etc.
During the first FOUR hours, the very few parts that needed input from me were about killing some fast-moving rats, and moving a few crates around. FASCINATING.
So, if you like such games, I bet you could enjoy it. Not my style though.
Eventually, it becomes more interesting of course, as you can switch between reality and afterlife realms.
Unfortunately, the gameplay has SO many little problems here and there...
The "straight-on" view can lead to VERY confusing situations.
Some actual paths look like walls, and the opposite is true.
Where it becomes way more infuriating is when you can't evaluate distances correctly and fall in water, for example.
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| Jacuzzi redneck style! It reminds me of the movie "Trading Places" for some reason. "When I was growing up, if we wanted a Jacuzzi, we had to fart in the tub." 😂 |
Fighting system is extremely primitive.
In EVERY fight, the only interaction required from me was to keep pushing the attack button as fast as possible to beat my enemies. I barely had to move around either.
It doesn't feel like a chore, but not like an accomplishment either.
Fighting scenes become a routine after some time and don't even care. It's so easy anyway. (...except the final boss...)
Of course, we can't ask this game to have a deep combat system like Dead Cells, but still...
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| This is based on one of my favorite scenes of Ghostbusters!😋 |
OLDSCHOOL IS NOT ALWAYS BETTER: NO QUICKSAVES!
The game hasn't quicksaves, but checkpoints. %*#<~!🤦
I know that people are very divided about this... Some hate it, others love it.
Since this game is a narrative experience though, I think a quicksave would be better cos if you die, you really don't want to have to re-read dozens of dialogues...
It's kinda related, but this game could really use a fast travel system.
And it goes with the travel system, we NEED a minimap that we can access anytime.
The only maps I found were some signs in the city...
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| There are a few mini-games like this too, where you have to switch lanes constantly, trying to escape from the police! |
GRAPHICS - 90s GAMES LOOKED BETTER THAN THAT
I definitely don't share the MASSIVE excitement about the looks of this game, sorry.
The graphics looked super cool in the trailer...
The screenshots I saw were very nice as well, but that was because I looked at them from far away, in a tiny window...
But once you play the game on a 23" screen and see the pixels so close to your face, you realize the game doesn't have its own style.
What I mean is that since every pixel artist has only so little to work with, he usually tries to use tricks to develops his own style to represent as much as possible with very few pixels.
Here, all I see is flat shapes with no distinct texturing, and therefore no atmosphere.
What's that? You want an example? Alright, how about the campfire scene?
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| The campfire scene in Crossing Souls. Weird disharmonious colors, flat shapes, no real "pixel texturing". You think this looks good? Wait and look at THIS now.⬇ |
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| The campfire scene in Chrono Trigger. Looking incredible, with WAY less pixels. Trees look way more detailed despite the low resolution, lighting is almost realistic, and characters look more lively. This is true pixel art. Or even true art.😍 |
Some areas do have beautiful colors and you just feel comfortable wandering around such cozy environments. But why such simplistic pixel art?
Games made on the Super Famicom in early 90s were better made than this.
They needed art direction or something... Just look at the trees leaves... The abstract looking buildings... And the idle animation of the characters, which often looks "broken"... Or the weird staircase in the first house...lol (some serious perspective problems there 😅)
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| Is it just me, or the staircase on the left is seriously messed up? Or maybe I'm just used to the way they're drawn in traditional JRPGs. lol |
I LOVE pixel art and usually I'm ready to tolerate everything, but this is simply too...simple. lol
They should have gone for way, way higher detailed pixel art.
There's such a thing as "not enough pixels". lol
Just compare to the recent "Bud Spencer & Terence Hill - Slaps and Beans", for example.
Or The Mummy Demastered, although this is not a top-down view.
I guess that in the past few years, I've been spoiled by so many great looking pixel art games, that I became way more demanding now. lol
... At some point in the game, you see a nice 50s retro diner. They seemed quite popular in the 80s... Actually, the whole 50s decade made a strong come back back then.
This is how it looks =>
And here's how I wish it looked instead.
⬇
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| This is "Orion Burger", a PC adventure game from 1996. And THIS is "style", friends.👍 I grew up playing games like these. There's literally almost NO games with such graphics ever made anymore... Why? I often see people in awe at recent pixel art, but you youngsters need to keep in mind that for the most part, PIXEL ART WAS BETTER IN THE 90s. This is not nostalgia, it was actually really better. |
On the positive side, you WILL enjoy trying to recognize the countless little references to 80s movies or games scattered everywhere in the game.
Unfortunately, the graphics are so minimalist that I had a hard time doing that most of the time... Here's a good example =>
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| Mini-game! Try to spot Michael Jackson's Thriller cover art! Kinda difficult, eh? Crossing Souls art is so minimalist that you can't even recognize what's on the screen most of the time. I guess the bright side is that it leaves room to your imagination, though. |
Oh! I forgot to mention the little cartoons sequences though!
I think they're super cool, albeit too short and feel a bit disconnected from the storyline.
But they REALLY look like they were made in the 80s!
I'm not sure what techniques they used, but I wouldn't be surprised if I learned that they used hand-drawn traditional animation!
Between the lines and film grain, the animation looks like it has a good amount of texture, which is not the case in modern animation.
Modern cartoons usually don't have any kind of textures anymore, resulting in a "colder" feeling.
If you're interested, here's a great video about the evolution of Japanese animation from the hand-drawn era to the full-digital era. Both have their pros and cons, but overall, most modern anime don't have that special something about them...
Anyway, the artists sure succeeded in recreating the 80s cartoons style!🤗👍
*SPOILERS IN THE VIDEO!!!*
MUSIC - GREAT ORCHESTRAL MUSIC AND NEWRETROWAVE
Chris Köbke did an incredible job!
The OST makes me think of good old "family" movies from the 80s, like Honey I Shrunk the Kids.(get it here) Some tracks sound EXTREMELY good, movie-like, and this might be the best aspect of the game.
Besides the orchestral parts, there are also many NewRetroWave tracks, which fit the game perfectly, and sound very good, because... They were made by TIMECOP1983!!
One of the best artists in this genre.
RATING BOX
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VERSION TESTED: 1.2.4
Publisher:
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| GRAPHICS: 63% | |
| Minimalist pixel art with almost no texturing, resulting in a game without a style of its own. On the other hand, animated cutscenes are VERY well done and succeed in replicating the 80s style. |
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| MUSIC: 92% | |
| The best part about the game! Movie-like orchestral pieces which would belong well in a big-budget 80s comedy, mixed with Timecop1983's best neoretrowave compositions! | |
| SOUNDS: 70% | |
| Extremely limited and simple, but at least they blend in and don't annoy the player. Nothing special. | |
| GAMEPLAY: 58% | |
| Linear narrative gameplay, occasionally interrupted by very basic Nes-style beat'em up and/or shooting scenes, and some underwhelming childish puzzles. | |
| OVERALL RATING: 62% | |
| The fake nostalgia factor won't save this one from being just an average game with nor depth neither substance. The story is interesting(although a bit longish), but plagued by poorly written dialogues(although I just found out that a bad translation could be the cause!). The whole experience is further worsened by the lack of gameplay creativity and minimalist art choice resulting in an easily forgotten adventure game, which was seemingly never given deep consideration. |
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