"Good, Bad & Evil"
Armyless recommended this level. Since I had a great time reviewing his "Little Big Dreamer (v 2.2)", I thought to check out his friend Zaphloo's level as well.
My first reaction to the level was of interest because of the number of plays and hearts this level received, and the community's feedback was correct. The level is very well designed, with a good storyline, and very entertaining.
"Good, Bad & Evil" is a horizontal/vertical linear progression level, that does not use any standard background template from the game. The environment is very austere in the beginning, duo chromatic (white and fuscia), there is a certain “angelic” or “heavenly” quality to the environment which plays into the storyline as a whole. Zaphloo takes you right into the story by introducing your guide, a 2D talking triangle (almost reminds me of a computer cursor in a way). The storyline concentrates on ideas - good, bad, and evil. A simple concept, but effective as a theme for this particular level design. The triangle character states that ideas (depicted in the games as grab-able cylinders) are everywhere and being produced constantly. Some ideas are good (green), some ideas are bad (red), and a few of them are evil (black).
The game proceeds to take you on a tour of the “idea factory” and presents to you a very entertaining point of view how ideas are born, sorted, discarded, categorized, and praised. Something happens during the tour, and the factory malfunctions. Evil ideas take over the factory and overwhelm the production line. The factory falls apart, until it is completely consumed by evil ideas. At this point of the game, the entire feel of the level changes drastically to a grimy, dingy dungeon like maze, almost “hellish” in contrast from the beginning of the level. Eventually you are faced with the grim reaper, the evil idea boss. There is a simple message at the end of the level, which I do not want to give away. Here is the video clip on Youtube:
There are numerous instances in the game that I thought was ingenious in the way how it was presented and how the player interacts in the level. The sorting wheel of ideas in the beginning and how you have to gather 5 good ideas to open the next stage door; the machine that discards bad ideas, the idea classifier machine, to mention a few. Please check out this level from Zaphloo for yourself. You will not regret the 10 min. you will spend experiencing this level.
My rating for this level is as follow:
Overall Impression: A-
Replay Value: B
Storyline: B+
Craftsmanship: A-
Prizes and Gifts: C (PS: After having a conversation with Zaphloo about the lack of prize or gift at the end, he mentioned that due to a possible virus or programming glitch, he decided not to flood the players with his custom creations. Thank you Zaphloo for update.)
2 comments:
Very fun to read the review of my own level. To review the review, good job, I think you summed it up nicely and described the essence extremely well! :) I'm also very happy about the rating, in particular that you give it as high as a B in replay! :)
As for prizes. There's currently a bug affecting at least some people connected to having too much objects & photos in your profile. Symptoms range from reboot of PS3 upon game exit to failure to save progress in story levels. Ref: http://community.eu.playstation.com/playstationeu/board/message?board.id=b_EN_GAMES_general_lbp&thread.id=41959
That's the reason I keep gifts to a minimum...
Further comments. :) I've been tweaking the level now and then. At the start it was a puzzle at the "classifier" that involved pulling the lever to the right and pressing green button for things to progress. When I published I saw the Braaains tag got huge, so I changed that to just a timer. Once you step in that room things progress after a set time regardless of what you do. All I really wanted there was to give the players a feeling that THEY were the ones who had tampered with the machine causing it to fail... :)
Another 'smart' thing, I think, I added that isn't apparent is the fire stairs/steps you jump your way up past. There's a timer there too that starts after the first jump. After a relatively short time but long enough for good/medium good players to have moved past the fires dissolves - to make it a lot easier for those having problems there. I just didn't want anyone ending up dying there after having come that far... :)
Zaphloo, Thank you for your comment. It is always great to have inside information directly from the creator as a feedback. Sometimes I feel like my review might have totally missed the mark on what the creator had intended for the players to understand. I am hoping thru more interaction between players and creators, we can all become better designers in this Little Big Planet of ours. Keep on Creating! Congratulations on hitting the +1000 mark on both # of plays and hearts for "Good, Bad & Evil"! Be sure to return and find out which levels I am playing and more level reviews.
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