Rifter

Rifter is a quality game, which does not deserve the indifference encountered since its release, but I will unfortunately still have to make things worse with this negative evaluation... Rifter is a hardcore platformer or precision platformer in the vein of Super meat boy, N + + or Dustforce, with very short and very purified levels, a demanding difficulty that causes frequent deaths but that is compensated by checkpoints tighten and a lack of pause between failures, an assessment of the player's performance through a scoring system and online leaderboards, etc. The originality of Rifter in relation to the genre is that jumping is here very secondary, we move mainly thanks to a grappling that is directed by default with the analog sticks. This part of the game, in its fundamentals, is very successful: manipulate the hero, move from grip as if we were making Trapeze, play on acceleration, gravity and inertia etc. is intuitive and fun. Obstacles and enemies are interesting, varied and well thought out. Technically and artistically, the game is correct, with 2D gameplay using a stylized 3D very clean, readable and fluid, and an aesthetic line "1980 years" rather artificial, closer to the fashionable clichés on the years 1980 than what they were actually, but coherent and effective. The three worlds of the game are much alike (it seems that only their colors change), but it is not crippling. So, what's wrong with Rifter? The problem with Rifter is that he tries to deviate from the formula of hardcore platformer without thinking about the consequences of his choices. First of all, the game wants to tell a story (and why not, Super meat boy did it too), but its narration is too intrusive, with a talkative Sidekick who follows us everywhere and with stylized characters who embark on endless tirades and impassable, sometimes in the middle of the action! Then, the game has many items to collect that allow you to unlock new moves, and other moves automatically unlock as we progress. The concern is that these freshly unlocked movements allow access to certain areas of the previous levels, and therefore, when you play, you never know if an element is out of reach because it is wrong or because we have not yet unlocked the good movement. It is very annoying and very much ruining the experience, and also makes that you can not lend itself to scoring until you have finished all the game and thus unlocked all the movements. Partly because of these elements to be collected, the level design of the game is wobblefree, not knowing how to slice between the formula of hardcore platformer (which is on a high legibility) and that of the game of exploratory platforms (which put on the contrary on concealment). The result is a view too zoomed (there is no general view and it misses a lot), where we sometimes do not know where to go and where it is often necessary to make precise jumps in blind to catches or obstacles located outside the screen... And finally, the life system of Rifter is also a mixture of two models: usually the hardcore platformers are very difficult but have infinite lives and short levels with frequent checkpoints. Here, the game is difficult, the levels are short, the checkpoints are frequent, but the lives are not infinite, with a system of lives and unintuitive hearts that makes you start again at the last checkpoint validated and sometimes at the very beginning of the level . One does not understand well the interest of such a system, confused and irritating. All these accumulated worries ruined the pleasure of the game, that I did not want to continue past its 50%, and it is a shame, because if he had just followed the formula of hardcore platformer without narration too intrusive, without all this collection, without progressive release and without this system of stupid lives, and with a level design redesigned entirely around the action, the game could have been excellent. I recommend instead to play or replay the games quoted at the beginning of the evaluation or, if you really want to play with a grappling, to try remnants of Naezith, which is much more sober but better thought and more taking.