I have just finished my first game of the month, Earth Atlantis. Earth Atlantis was released in 2018 by HeadUp Games. What drew me to Earth Atlantis was the visual design, an interesting brown and white sketchbook looking style. The game was recently on sale on the PlayStation Store so I thought to myself, why not purchase it.
Oreos. When I first tried Oreo biscuits I thought they were okay but nothing special. Then I tried them covered in white chocolate and had a mouth orgasm, or a mouthgasm if you will. Changing gears slightly I really like Cadbury's Creme eggs, I know they are bad, I mean really bad for me but I don't care. Naturally, when I saw that Oreo has combined their biscuit with a creme egg I was more than a little excited. However, my excitement was misplaced as it ended up being a dry hollow experience. Playing Earth Atlantis I found myself asking was the idea better than how it tasted?
Story
Side-scrollers, as a rule, don't have much of a story, which is fine but because the gameplay generally makes up for it. Earth Atlantis has less of a story and more a concept and you are informed of this before you have even started playing. 'The Great Climate Shift struck at the end of the 21st century, leaving 96% of the Earth's surface underwater. Human civilization has fallen, and the ocean is full of creature-machine hybrid monsters. You are a hunter with a mission to destroy all monsters'. That's it really.
Overall the premise is simple but fun with no airs or graces about itself.
Visuals
The art style used in Earth Atlantis is stunning. As you explore the ocean depths in your submarine you will get to see the ruins of our former civilization, everything from tall building and churches, to the Statue of Liberty and Space Shuttle. There is a multitude of small and larger enemies that are mechanical aquatic creations which look really interesting. There a couple of shortcomings, the first being it can be difficult to tell if you can pass through an area or not. The second (and most frustrating) are that a number of enemies fire bullets/lasers that are almost completely white. This means avoiding enemies attacks when you literally can't see them coming.
Overall the visuals are impressive, but a few poor choices made the playing the game a little frustrating.
Music
I had to take many deep breaths before reviewing the 'music' section. Essentially there was one track in the game, with the only change up being when fighting bosses, which for the most part lasted a few minutes each. If you watch/listen to the trailer below you will have listened to more than ninety percent of the entire soundtrack. The composer is Canadian born Garret Schmidt, who worked on a number of project for films and video games
I am unsure if HeadUp Games asked Schmidt to just produce one main track and a couple of smaller ones. Imagine listening to the same one-minute track for about six or seven hours. My maths isn't great but that means you will end up hearing it between three-hundred-sixty to four-hundred-twenty times!
Overall the tracks themselves were okay but the lack of variety was both mind-boggling and annoying. So annoying in fact I ended up muting the TV and listening to a podcast instead.
Gameplay
Earth Atlantis's 2D-side scroller can be fun at times. The are two modes Quest Mode, and Hunter mode. Basically, you have a submarine, you kill smaller sea monsters who drop power-ups and these are then used to kill one of the many bosses. The bosses battles generally last a few minutes each and they vary quite a bit. On occasion, you will be attacked by a pirate and if you are successful in defeating them you unlock their vessel. That's the good parts.
Then there are the bad parts. The map is supposed to help you navigate the world to not only find bosses but also powers ups. The problem is that it's not very intuitive, and in the early part of the game I could not work out how it worked. I often found myself doubling back over areas which made it feel like a bit of grind. The boss fights can be fun but if you get killed you have to gather your power-ups again and navigate back to the boss. It really made it difficult to enjoy the experience. While some bosses were quite good fun others felt wasted. In some cases, there was so much happening you could not safely look at them without getting hit. The white lasers/bullets mentioned in visuals was really gripe for me especially later on in the game.
Overall the gameplay is good but a few relatively smaller changes could have made the game a lot more enjoyable.
Final Thoughts
How did I feel after eights hours? Not great. There wasn't much of a story but it's a side scroller so it did not require anything too big. The visuals were impressive but on occasion did hamper my enjoyment of the game. The music, next! The gameplay could be fun but similar to the visuals a few changes could have made the experience a lot more enjoyable. Overall this one gets a disappointing 2 out of 5
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