“So I’m here, do whatever I can / hold what I am, claiming that I am a superman”
Did these words move something in you? If, like me, you spent your childhood Tony Hawk professional skater (THP) series of games, it is impossible not to start Groooving to Goldfinger’s ska beats in your head. In many ways, growing up in the late 90s and early 00s, meant growing in the middle of the golden age of skateboard games. THE THP The series was defined by ERA, and the follow -up Tony Hawk’s Underground The series formed an incredible Coda at the time with its Donkey-Inspired affices.
During the 2010s, we went through something of a comparative skateboard drought, but it seems to be careful recently, with titles like Session And Skater XL Provide a balm with our fingers dry and cracked tips.
When Hop first arrived at my attention to The Steam Next Fest in FebruaryI was very excited. Here is a skating game that promised to be more than a simple skating game. It would also be a roguelite, the mixture THP with Hell. A game that succeeded was necessarily a success, effortlessly marrying skating and an exciting fight, combined in a playful tone.
Unfortunately, Hop does not reach this high goal. At least, not yet. Playing games in early access is always a risky proposal, as there is a high degree of probability that the end game looks like and feels considerably different. I hope this is the case with Hop.
Stygian skaterer
The main main thing in the history of Hop Is it: you are Anton Falcon, a demon with no luck (it is not clear?). With a name strangely similar to another Skating Birdman, Anton tries to escape from Vertheim (a kind of underground world) and to reach a long -awaited beach. Along the way, you make tips, collect upgrades for your powers and fight the most openly bad inhabitants in Vertheim, as well as skating in competitions supervised by King Garland, who is not the biggest Fan of Anton, to say it slowly.
The story and the dialogue are very good – they will not light your world, and some see each other as if he was trying a little too strong to be cool. In the end, they are not terrible and serve their goals to bring Anton back to Anton disorders on the half-pipe.
Whenever you die, you return to the shopping center prison (the concept of which has made me laugh of me), a perfect setting for the base of Anton, the young garbage center that he is. Here, there are various stores that you can use to upgrade your capacities with currencies collected in Vertheim. These upgrades include tattoos (which do not really change Anton’s appearance, unfortunately) and new decks that change your equipped weapon. The full upgrades, you go to Vertheim again and repeat.
Back to the old face
The basic game loop of Hop is made up of two components: skating and fighting. I think it is important to look at the gameplay loop of this game like Hegelian dialectics: thesis, antithesis and, finally, the synthesis of the two.
There is no easy way to say this: the fight is not fun. Hop has none of the weight or spark of Underworld fight. The R1 hammering with a light attack will allow you to pass the vast majority of meetings. The liquidation of heavy attacks is far too long, interrupting the flow and attracting while putting grinding.
Then there is the Dodge, which, although it can be effective, throws you a little too far, interrupting your lines and throwing your skating lines. The usefulness of the Dodge is decreased by the fact that, although you can see the enemy projectiles and where they aim, some of them will move their goal while they attack, so try that you can avoid their attacks, C is far from predictable.
The skating is not particularly good either, which is a problem given that it is above all a skating game. This is the strongest part of the game in its current state, but it has too many technical defects and design for me to fall in love. There are bad lullabies on my desk (Intel i7-12700f, RTX 4070, 32 GB of RAM), which throws the timing. Due to combat buttons sitting on your bumpers and triggers, the game has no transfer or transfer of the spine, which makes the reaction of mega combos incredibly delicate.
As such, when you land towers of a ramp, you must quickly hammer a manual and the synchronization window is tightmuch tighter than that of the equivalent window in Professional skater. Despite the game sometimes handing you over a combo shield, which allows you longer spaces between the towers, this is not enough. Like accumulating combos, with a killing enemy, is a regular challenge in HopThis transforms what should be a happy example of locking in a flow state in a frustrating challenge.
Skatefighter
So when you combine these two basic gameplay elements, how do you feel? Unfortunately, it leads to the two systems. The slightly erratic movement of skating can make the damage difficult and attack enemies, while the need for combat means that you cannot simply enter a state of pleasant flow and accumulate huge scores as you can THP. If you thought, like me, that you withdraw from your board for the combat sequences can allow you at least to make it slightly more conventional and pleasant, you are not lucky: hitting an attack entry will reject your Plate, there is therefore no attenuation of frustration.
The level design is another Bugbear and is often your worst enemy in the battles of the game. There are tips and other dangers strewn on several levels, and fall into one of them will reduce your health. Of course, it is to be expected, but jump and dodge always too far and fall into apparently fatal water was a constant problem throughout my time with Hop.
I mentioned that the frames of executives were a problem, but it is not the only regular boring bug that is present. Falling through the landscapes and, in fact, falling to the ground and out of the world has occurred several times during my time to play Hop. In a case that gave me never to want to play the game again, I entered landscapes above a point trap, damaging me without fault.
Finally, the visual style of the game, despite a certain degree of charm, can become very busy (and buggy) during the fight. This means that you will be stuck by fighting like a fish that someone has come out of the water and stuck on a roller board sometimes, to various degrees of success and embarrassment.
Music is well – it’s a little more emoed than I remember THP Being, which, combined with aesthetics, can make it feel a bit as if you were playing in an advertisement for the warm subject. There are still moments when music and action meet as in the Professional skater Games of the past, and all that is fine, but it does not happen often enough.
Land the combo
So, it is Hop Good in its current form? No, not really, and it upsets me. I hoped that in the end, it would click with me and I would get it, but it never happened. I desperately wanted this game to be good: I really like its two key influences, but for the moment, it’s just not fun.
Helskate is the first game of the developer based in Amsterdam, Phantom Coast. I wondered if the game just tries to do the impossible (word game not expected). Can you mix the gameplay of the state of flow of something like THP With a roguelite, without diluting the experience either? The project can be too ambitious – there are certainly Roguelites who have made the crossing interesting, as Snape Legacy 2But the additional complexity layer that accompanies skating gives the impression of trying to do too much.
I hope I am wrong. Under all the frustrations I have experienced HopThere is something here that is charming. I hope that during its early access period, Hop will eventually land all of his combos.
Score: n / a
Hop is now available in steam for PC and Mac on early access. It costs $ 24.99.
Warning: An examination code was provided by the publisher. Given the early state of the game, we have chosen not to provide a score.
