骨灰玩家
是浪子，別泊岸
 
- 贡献度
- 738
- 金元
- 200607
- 积分
- 23023
- 精华
- 1
- 注册时间
- 2009-6-7
   
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Jimmy and the Pulsating Mass is the most I’ve ever felt conflicted about a game, so much that it is nearly impossible for me to write down my thoughts. Clearly so much blood, sweat, and tears were put into this and it makes me upset that I just can’t recommend it. There were times where I felt like this could’ve been a masterpiece, and then there were other times where I wanted to put the controller down and stop playing entirely.
I’m going to get this out of the way now; the story has as much meaning as you put into it. The story centers around an 8 year old boy named Jimmy who needs to defeat a villain known as the Pulsating Mass. The writing, humor, and characters are amazing but the actual story leaves a lot to be desired.
There’s tons of room for symbolism and subtext for almost everything in the game, but the catch is that almost nothing is explained to you. This isn’t inherently bad, but the integral moments of the game don’t hit like they should when you can’t assess what anything truly means in the moment or what’s even going on at all. This isn’t like the player viewing the game’s story differently due to what they appreciate in their storytelling; this is the player making up the game’s story as it progresses like a page from a Mad Libs book. I understand that art is in the eye of the beholder, but I still feel like there should’ve been a middle ground between things being concrete and other things left up to the player’s imagination and personal experiences.
The gameplay has some incredible ideas such as the empathy system acting both like the job system from Final Fantasy (allowing you to use different skills and power up Jimmy’s different forms) and like the tag mechanic from Omori (allowing you to use different forms to find secrets when exploring dungeons). There is also the imagination tab, which allows you to use skills outside of that respective form if you have enough experience for that given form. This allows for customization with attacks, and deciding which stats and forms to prioritize getting experience for can be incredibly engaging. There’s also the grift ability which allows Jimmy to steal items from enemies, with many uses other than making the enemy weaker and can lead to even more possibilities when battling.
When the battles work, they really work; interesting, strategic, and most importantly fun... but that’s when they work. 50% of this game feels like poorly paced grinding and padding, and that’s my biggest complaint with Jimmy- I feel like Jimmy was made to be a couple hours long stretched out to be 20-30 hours. This game is a grindfest in both getting money and getting experience. No matter what you want to get, it’s always either going to be too expensive or be guarded by a boss you’re not strong enough to beat. Then when it comes to pacing and padding, there are so many moments that I feel could’ve been cut entirely. The dungeons in this game are a prime example. Instead of having interesting ideas of puzzles in each dungeon, they are all bland and identical to each other. Going through each door in the twice with no differences other than a skin change is the definition of tedium.
I applaud the attempt and I will support any other projects the developer has in store (heard a new game's Steam page is coming in 5-6 months), but for as many things I enjoyed about Jimbo, it just wasn’t for me. |
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发表于 2021-11-10 15:14
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