Yuji Naka. Behind this name, which will probably not speak to many people, hides the creator of Sonic who, despite everything, became Shigeru Miyamoto's rival in the 1990s for the simple reason that they were the fathers of the mascots of the major players in the video game. But where the Nintendo star has nurtured his stardom, Yuji Naka has stayed away from the limelight. This did not prevent him, as the big boss of the Sonic Team, from releasing numerous projects, of which we will retain Nights into Dreams, Burning Rangers as well as Phantasy Star Online for the most significant. Then he left Sega in 2006 to create his own development company with much more discreet projects.
Honestly, I thought he had retired. But apparently that's not the case, since he's been working for Square Enix for nearly 3 years and released Balan Wonderworld, a platform game that I tested for you and whose introduction you just read.
How does it show too much that I wasn't inspired by this intro? Nana, it's not true first!
So what is Balan Wonderworld about? Like Nights, little narration, few dialogues, we are treated to a cinematic which presents us with two children, a boy and a girl, who both find themselves "reflecting" each other (a bit as if each was in a different dimension) in a building named Balan Wonderworld. they are greeted there by Balan himself, a mysterious character and downright not human! After a little cabaret visual spectacle and a few cryptic words he says about fixing the child's heart, the game finally begins - with a serious air of deja vu - and we're thrown onto a tiny island that goes serve as the hub of the game and provide access to its 12 worlds. Each of these worlds has a theme related to a person's wounded heart. Your role will therefore be to finish one of the 2 levels, very platform-oriented, of the world to recover the heart and then to do the second to assemble it into a sphere, which will trigger a third level which consists of a boss battle. Once this boss is eliminated, the person's heart is cleansed of their demons and the world is over, but not 100%, leaving the possibility of revisiting it once you have other costumes capable of reaching inaccessible secrets and incompatible with those of this precise world.
Classic in its development, the game boasts of offering more than 80 costumes granting the player skills. And this is the beginning of the drama (and far from being the last, unfortunately) since if we remove the duplicate costumes, those that have no use and those that have completely stupid functions or powers serving the fun, only a handful of useful costumes remain. And even...
We can see that the developers went to scrape the bottoms of the drawers to inflate the number. Seriously...what's the point of having some of the transformations for abilities that turn on and off randomly? Some of them even making the character even more useless than without a costume!
Already the game uses only one button for everything, it was difficult to do more minimalist and chaotic, but the developers succeeded with these absurd costumes. Yes, one button, you read that right. If we exclude the edge buttons which are used to switch from one costume to another among the 3 active ones, all the buttons are used for the same action. This causes some characters to be unable to jump. No, forget that... which prevents some characters from climbing a 2 cm high step, when the height reached by their feet when they walk easily exceeds it!
Unfortunately, some actions are contextual, especially on the island, making this unique button completely chaotic with the character taking out an action instead of the desired one... Even the Skylanders series offered characters capable of doing several things!
The whole game is equally wonky, as the very core of the concept and level design is wonky and lazy with invisible walls and uninspired levels. And when a concept is flawed, the result can't be good, it's flawed, I've already said that! Fortunately, there is the technique to raise the level...
What ? Not even ?
Oh yes, hey! The sets and characters are empty and simplistic, even if the modeling is fortunately clean despite the few aliasing effects which, if they are not annoying in game, are a little spot during the cutscenes.
But a simplistic and cute appearance is not so damaging, on the contrary, it has its charm. Even more for a game intended for children (but not only).
On the other hand, the limited camera, worthy of the era of the infancy of the 3D platform, the numerous freezes, the invisible walls, the edges which "slip", the collision bugs, the framerate drops, the visual artifacts (in the form of 'a long white vertical stripe on the right side of the screen that appears from time to time), repetitiveness, are and are not forgivable these days. It's very simple, always expect freezes and heavy lags as soon as enemies appear. You will also have them at other times, but at least you can count on the fact that they are bound to arrive during these times. Probably to prevent that you will have 2 seconds of action. Because yes, the game is also more than elementary. The bosses only start to show a bit of resistance and less obvious action patterns - and again - from world 8 (out of 12). The half-bosses are a big joke that are not even worth the time of the cinematic of their summoning as their ease is insulting, even for an 8-year-old child.
We can also talk about Balan sequences which, like rhythm games, will require you to press the button at the right time. But again, these phases are stuffed with the same repetitive scenes that have no real appeal.
If we compile and analyze all this, I come to a sad conclusion: Balan Wonderworld is a game that came out 25 years late and still! It would have been released 20-25 years ago, it would have been effortlessly blown up by Super Mario 64, Spyro (in its original version!) and many other games much more accomplished and interesting in terms of gameplay and fun. Yuji Naka and his teams have clearly forgotten to evolve the gameplay of their games over time.
The whole game is distressing like that except for the music which is honorable, some passages are even very nice, although a bit repetitive. I'm not even surprised when I suggested to friends to come and try the 2 player mode and after warning them that the game was not good in single player, the best answer I got was: "I can't, I have a swimming pool". I'll spare you the laughs, the "Do you really want me to play that thing you just described to me?!" and death threats.
It is therefore impossible to test this 2-player mode, for lack of a companion on hand in these troubled pandemic times (risk of falling ill, yes, but only for an interesting and fun game!) and since the online seems to have been forgotten, let this test end.
The gossips will say "So much the better" in view of the poor quality of the title, but personally I am enormously disappointed to see such a mess on a title that I hoped for a minimum of pleasantness. Hopefully for his next game, Yuji Naka wakes up and upgrades his skills first through the MOOCs "Video Gaming in 2021: There's a Reason Controllers Have Had Multiple Buttons for Decades" and "C Isn't because I'm developing a game oriented for children that I have to take them for stupid incompetent retards".
In the meantime, Balan Wonderland is to be avoided unless you can find it in a garage sale at no more than 5 €, and even for that price, I personally find it expensive...
- Xbox One (tested version)
- PlayStation 4 and 5
- Nintendo Switch
- Xbox Series X | S
