Cosmic Top Secret reviews

Translated by
Microsoft from French
The basic pitch seemed interesting: the creator of the game, a Danish, discovers that her parents worked for the secret services of their country during the cold war. She decides to interview them and investigate them; recordings that she collects she draws a video game, both historical documentary about the cold war and espionage but also with a more personal slope on her relationship to her parents (and in particular, the relationship she maintains with her father, to priori). The game itself is an adventure game cut in 6 levels a priori, in each of which it will be necessary to find documents that will allow to advance the story and unlock videos of interview or archive. I only played a small hour (the tutorial level and about half the next level) before asking for the refund so what I have to say about this phase of research evolves perhaps when we advance in the game, what I have seen in any case is that it is it of an extremely marked phase: one follows more or less a path on which are found all necessary documents to advance the scenario (no riddle to solve). The tutorial is tiny but the second world looked bigger and organized as a small "open world"; so we find everything we need to move forward following the main road but we can also choose to mop up in the levels to find secret documents, kind of collectibles (which I do not know the usefulness, but I believe that if we found them all in the game-45 in the second level anyway! -one unlocks a bonus at the end of the game...). In short, a mechanic that allows to lengthen the lifespan, in my opinion artificially. All of this would still be widely acceptable in the State if the controls were not ATROCES: the game takes on the appearance of decouped papers/animated collages in a 3D world; a left click on our character makes him fold into a ball, once done (while holding the left click pressed) we move our cursor to the screen to move this ball. When we try to move our character, a slight click on the side makes it not go into a ball, and once in a ball, if one has the misfortune to let go of our left click, the character stops and we have to start again. It's already quite tedious in itself. Added to this is the fact that the camera moves by keeping the right click pressed and by moving our mouse (Finally, it follows us anyway more or less straight when we advance). Obviously, impossible in the options to reverse the axis according to which the camera moves (and which basic does not really suit me). For obvious reasons too, impossible to move the camera at the same time as we move our character (it would be equivalent to merging the left and right sticks, to make a comparison with a joystick. Controller that is not supported here elsewhere...). Unless you want to go straight we are obliged to maneuver by making various stops to reposition the camera each time. Which still adds to the heaviness of travel. Finally, once in a ball, the character has a crazy acceleration! As a result, we spend his time exceeding the place where we wanted to go (and thus to stop, to turn the camera back, to reposition our character in a ball and finally to move towards our target hoping not to go too far this time). I definitely gave up when the game started to introduce bridges of the width of our character and platform phases... Knowing that we jump with space and that the length of our jump depends on the acceleration of the speed of our character at the time of the jump, speed perfectly uncontrollable given the absurd acceleration that he undergoes every move... I am extremely disappointed because the basic idea really interested me. The game was also developed for tactile (it was the first platforms I believe), it certainly explains partly the rotten controls (without apologizing), maybe they are more effective like that. It would have been so much simpler to do the same type of controls that exist in any 3D game for 20 years. Or just to have us click on the place where we want to go so that the character is heading there. Of course not. The result is unplayable. To see if it will be patched one day...
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