#Hyper light drifter review wtf is update#

The aforementioned freedom of exploration and gear choice also comes with a few pitfalls: With no real direction or “quest system” provided, you’ll easily run into areas that clearly have a higher difficulty curve than others. Discover the limitsĪlmost all upgrades can be purchased from the shop in the town hub, but you need to explore to find the currency for it! The order and direction of new abilities to unlock is completely up to you: fancy new sword moves? Need bigger magazines? Or would you prefer bullet deflection with your swords? More healthpacks to carry? Just go and buy it! With so many things to unlock there is also quite a variety to the fluid combat of “Hyper Light Drifter” and – combat sure is the main driving element of the game and tons of fun. There are smaller visual hints in the world that lead you to tons of secrets like treasures, weapons and upgrades, a big part of which can also be unlocked in the central hub area via exchange of small orange currency items found in the world. Smaller visual cues and hints give some insight into origin of your disease, but you’re always chasing for more areas and locations to unravel more of the intriguing plot.Īnd this exploration is done in the best sense of “Metroidvania” – given very few abilities right from the start, you can access most of the world right from the get-go. His sickness seems to be part of greater evil that has befallen the world, but only a few chosen are affected as severely as you are. Your hero appears quite capable, but also brittle, near to death and urged forward to avoid the inevitable. Your crippling disease is not just a “motivation” gimmick – it’s also the main thread that keeps the narrative together. The game constantly urges you to explore more of its world, giving you almost absolute freedom in where you want to go, starting from the peaceful city hub that you discover early into the game.īefallen by Darkness – Only dreams and cuscenes give small glimpes on your hero’s predicament With little more than images to work with (and voices being just grunting or chirping sounds) it is amazing how much perceived depth there is in Hyper Light Drifter: there are stories of war, but also companionship, gruesome hints of genocide, slavery, but also pieces of hope and humor to be found everywhere. Soon you’ll meet various different races, some of which are being quite helpful, giving you small hints and bitpieces of information to help you to puzzle together the story. Terminally ill and haunted by very visual and threatening nightmares you’ll start with pretty much nothing but a few clues on why you are in this world and what your real purpose is. The narrative starts with you being a hero of unknown origin and purpose. The Soundtrack by Disasterpeace (FEZ amongst other games) does an amazing job of underlining the eerie yet beautiful scenery, giving your senses a lot to chew on in order to fill in all the smaller and bigger narrative gaps that the game does throw around so deliberately with its reduced style. Right after pushing that start button you’ll be immediately dragged into a world of melancholy, beauty and futuristic appeal, all expertly combined and wrapped in spot-on pixel art that never loses its appeal or visual coherency. The first minute diving into this game you’ll know that you’re in for a treat: Aside from a few tutorial text queues the story of Hyper Light Drifter is exclusively told using an intricate weaving of images and sounds.

The world emits beauty and melancholy, destruction can be found right next to nature. Therefore I’m increasing my rating from 8 to a well-deserved 9.5 since this game is close to perfect! It also offers local coop now (which I haven’t tested), but the effort put into this is commendable to say the least.

#Hyper light drifter review wtf is update#

Update (): This game has been reworked from the ground up to run at 60 FPS, and I just made sure that it’s still bug-free by playing through it again! Today I can safely say that Hyper Light Drifter is now twice as awesome to play as the huge 30-FPS con-point is completely gone! This is hands-down one of the best indie-titles I’ve played so far. Read more about that in the following chapters. The spot-on presentation and great soundtrack (courtesy of Disasterpeace) both play a great role in it, but there is way more to “Hyper Light Drifter” than the sum of its parts. Just a few days ahead of release I even got word of this game – and instantly bought it at first sight! Not only is this game an open homage to Zelda, it also stands and defines its own style by a wide margin. Hyper Light Drifter is a game that hit me totally unexpected.