A small Finnish studio Housemarque became widely known due to a series of shooters Stardust, the first game which was released in 1993. But commercial success came to the Finns much later, after they began a long-term cooperation with Sony on the release of their new games for consoles of the PlayStation family. So in 2007, the game appeared Super Stardust HD, in 2013 there was a spectacular side-scroller Resogun, and in 2016 - a shooter with elements of the role-playing game Alienation. Today I would like to tell you about a completely new Housemarque game for the PlayStation 4 console, called Matterfall.
Game: Matterfall
Platform: PlayStation 4
Genre: Side-scrolling, Shooter
Release date: August 16, 2017
Developer: Housemarque
Publisher: Sony Interactive Entertainment
Finns from Housemarque decided not to change their genre commitment, so they released a game that combines elements of the side scroller, shooter and platformer. The plot tells about the future, where the influence of mankind extends far beyond the planet Earth. Dangerous experiments with mysterious matter found in the mines of one of the alien colonies, get out of control, which leads to disaster. Reasonable matter literally covers huge territories and captures people in hard cocoons. The raid is called by a mercenary named Avalon Darrow. Armed with the latest technology, she goes on a dangerous mission, during which she must not only save the survivors, but also to understand what caused the disaster.
Before you start the game you will be asked to choose the difficulty level. And here it is necessary to be extremely cautious. If you are at least superficially familiar with the previous games Housemarque, you have to understand: it's hardcore to the core of the bones shooters, which are not fully understood by everyone. To begin with, I recommend that you choose the difficulty of "Novice", in which the main character will receive additional segments of health, and the opponents will be much easier. But even at the lowest complexity you will have hard times. If you want to be in the epicenter of this "bullet hell", you can take a chance and choose the complexity of "Veteran". In this case, keep in mind that I do not answer for the safety of your nervous system. On the screen there will be such a hell of explosions and flying shells that in the eyes can start to ruffle. There is in the game and something in between "Novice" and "Veteran" - this is the complexity of the "Mercenary".
The game Matterfall is divided into 12 levels, divided into several locations. Everything begins in the huge alien metropolis of Fortune City, but the main heroine also has to visit hydroponic farms and even mines, where they extract mysterious matter. A serious difference from previous Housemarque games was the presence in Matterfall of the jump, which is assigned to the R1 button of the DualShock 4 controller. Initially, this arrangement of the vital button seems somewhat strange, but very quickly you understand that when the left thumb controls the movement of the character, and the right one - The help of an analog joystick (mechanics, typical for twin-stick shooters), the index fingers of both hands remain free. Developers had to take such a dubious step, because in another way this task would simply not be solved.
Developers very interestingly realized in the game the interaction of the main character with the alien matter. Matter you will meet two different types. Red matter (dead) is dangerous to life. Try to avoid contact with it by any means. Blue matter (live) is your friend. It is made of various mechanisms, bulkheads, as well as the platform by which the Avalon moves and jumps. Most often, blue matter must be activated with the help of special radiation (the matter-gun is assigned to the L2 button). This is how you can turn on the elevator or make a tangible platform hanging in the air so that you can jump on it. The protagonist can also pass through the blue matter in a special breakthrough (L1 + left analog joystick). Thanks to such mechanics, the player has the widest opportunities. For example, you can activate a vertical blue wall and fly through it, hiding from enemy shots (enemies and their shells are not able to penetrate the blue matter). Among other things, the spurt stuns some opponents, making them vulnerable to your shots, and allows Avalon to fly through enemy bullets without harming one's health.
After death, some opponents leave cluster bombs of blue matter behind them. You can blast these bombs with your matter-gun, destroying everything around. On the screen at this time such an indescribable beauty is created that it's easy not to tear off the eye. Housemarque employees continue to improve their graphics engine based on voxel technology. Almost all 3D objects in the game consist of particles - "voxels". After the destruction, the object crumbles or explodes, throwing the components around it, so that the action on the screen looks like something truly epic. Imagine a game in which you seemed to fall into the epicenter of the festive fireworks. Approximately so you can describe some Matterfall scenes. Everything is moving, flying somewhere, shooting, exploding, but all this madness has a solid mathematical foundation, feeling that you can go out unscathed from the most intricate situations.
Some zones of game levels are very effective, where weightlessness is activated. Avalon soars in the air, firing back from the enemies and dodging the projectiles flying into it. Also in Matterfall there is a kind of pumping the character. Well, not really a pumping. Rather, the system of upgrades. As you pass, you will discover new augmentations and types of additional weapons, saving people in cocoons of red crystals. Thus, for example, you can get a grenade launcher that produces grenades that explode on contact with enemies, or a powerful shotgun. In total, the game has 12 different improvements (in terms of the number of levels), and at the same time you can use three, by setting them on the buttons of the D-Pad cross.
Despite the fact that the levels of Matterfall are long enough, the game still feels very short in duration. To run at a low level of complexity, you can literally in three or four hours. Unfortunately, we do not offer any bonus game modes. Overplaying Matterfall levels is possible in order to pass them with the help of new augmentations and to squeeze players from other countries into the scoring tables. We can say that in this respect Housemarque created a new direction in the field of e-sports. Thousands of people rushed to play the game and set new records. Personally, I was very pleased to see in the tables of champions players from Russia. By the way, the longer the main character succeeds in dodging enemy attacks, the more points she receives for killing opponents. It is thanks to their skill that some players can bypass others in the scoring tables. And it's not easy to become a master in Matterfall.
Pros:
- Fans of the hardcore gameplay will be completely delighted.
- The game is incredibly beautiful thanks to the voxel graphics engine.
- Manipulations with matter open up the ocean of opportunities for players.
- The presence of a jump greatly diversifies classical game mechanics.
- The augmentation system will allow pereprohodit levels in different ways.
- Pleases very democratic cost of the game - only 1299 rubles.
Minuses:
- High complexity will scare many.
- Absence of bonus game modes.
- Very long boot screens.
- The game is short enough.
Game Matterfall has fixed for Finnish developers from Housemarque the honorary title of "masters of artistic hardcore." In their new game, the influence of the Metroid series (the image of the main character, the general sci-fi setting) and the legendary Japanese shooter Ikaruga (the system of duality of matter and reigning on the bullet hell screen) is clearly felt. But in this case, I do not consider the borrowing of other people's ideas as something bad, because Matterfall does this incredibly subtle and with Finnish knowledge of the matter. Hardcore shooter from the veterans of the genre, no doubt, will find a grateful audience, and from me the game gets well-deserved 8 points out of 10 .
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