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Lastly, there’s a special tied to L1 which can be switched out with other options later in the game. You’ll become acquainted with with your melee blades which take numerous strikes to down basically anything, with the option of light and heavy attacks – only the heavy ones are pointless as they do minimal extra damage and take an age to animate through.

You’re quickly introduced to the basics of a pathetically weak feeling ranged attack as lasers hit your foes with nary an inkling from them as to whether it hurts them or not. Just like a thumping smash to the face from a powered up exosuit however, it’ll leave you reeling on the floor questioning why you even chose this life. The first 1-2 hours of Blackwind may hood-wink you into thinking there’s some underlying arcadey fun that’ll hold you over for its 5-6 hour runtime.

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Some nods to other game series and pop culture were nice, but the entire narrative package is a shell of a package, all gusto with no oomph. It feels like the game was trying to tread that admittedly very thin line between serious melodrama and slapstick humour, yet it fails to be funny in any singular way and can’t even make the voice actors care enough to give the characters some desperately required depth, so there’s little to latch onto as a player. It’s hard to take a “they were a good friend” line seriously when the two characters in question have had a grand total of 4 interactions maximum and barely even said a good thing about each other. You know it’s bad when a clearly signposted emotional moment is completely undercut by the fact there’s no substance to justify it. The story follows obvious and predictable twists, with poor writing meekly delivered with equally shoddy emphasis. The primary antagonist has one of the strangest deliveries of lines I’ve heard in good while, seemingly reading it in slow motion while also trying to be sinister yet coming off as weirdly elongated. James will switch from apparently being raging with anger to light-hearted idiot in the space of… about one line of dialogue. Voice acting is uniformly disinterested and most of the actors appear to have had scripts shoved at them and ordered to read out the lines without any sense of emotional context. I don’t mind the relatively obvious set up, but you’ll quickly discover that Blackwind doesn’t have a whole lot else to to deepen its narrative. Suiting up, it’s your job to get out there and save him. In the least surprising news of this year so far, your ship is assailed, crash lands onto the planet and daddio is now missing. Being a spectacular scientist, as is the way in these things, your dear old dad has developed a totally-only-for-pacifist-use mech suit, complete with a new AI program. Travelling to the supposedly peaceful Medusa-42 planet, we’re introduced to our main teenage protagonist, James Hawkins (always reminded me of Bully’s Jimmy Hopkins) and his father. Supporting a grand total of 2 cutscenes that book-end the start and finish of Blackwind, the opening sets up a traditional sci-fi adventure. Let’s get whisked away on this tame breeze of an action sci-fi game. All of the best ingredients are present and accounted for, but the execution just has the whole thing collapsing like any hypothetical attempt by me at making a soufflé. Akin to failing to bake a beautiful yet complex cake, it descends into a messy, bland and disappointing husk of what it absolutely could have been.

It helped that they looked, ran and played phenomenally too.īasically, there’s a helluva lot of potential to get creative within the genre and create a unique experience even without a huge budget.īlackwind is one of those agonisingly upsetting games that unfortunately takes so many core pieces of the genre but fails to blend any of them into a cohesive or ultimately enjoyable whole. The key element with each of these games was that they took core ingredients of the genre and focused on a couple to maximise those experiences and tap into that perfect sweet spot of challenge and satisfying reward. Even Hotline Miami’s furious and brutal blend of fast-faced lethal action. Or perhaps Ruiner’s depth of enemy variety requiring multiple strategies to be used in synergy creating a whirlpool of explosive options. Think Helldivers’ overwhelming numbers and achievement from overcoming the hordes with tactics and sharp shooting. Top-down twin-stick shooters are a surprisingly deep genre which can offer some truly challenging yet rewarding experiences… when done right. Is Blackwind a twin-stick action title worth it’s salt or a poor imitation of the genre? The Finger Guns Review: Suit up your power armour and prepare for combat.

Blackwind release date