ABANDONED: MANOS: The Hands of Fate
Apr. 8th, 2017 07:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kjorteoBecause if I'm stealing ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
xyzzysqrl's COMPLETE record-keeping concept, I may as well steal the NOT COMPLETE side too. I have a zillion games in the backlog, some have been languishing almost as long as I've been alive, but I do feel the need to make special record-keeping note of the ones where I tried them and now (just like the COMPLETE entries) I am done with this game.
So, what's the first official failure of this project? Well, I almost didn't bother counting this one because I NOPE'd out of it in under ten minutes, but... well, that's about how long Essence.exe would have been if I hadn't gotten stuck, and that one got a COMPLETE entry, so what the hell.
MANOS: The Hands of Fate is a tongue-in-cheek indie game based off the infamous Mystery Science Theater 3000-featured movie of the same name. Apparently they throw in some other MST3K miscellany to pad things out (there's a boss fight with Ro-Man from Robot Monster according to this trailer?? Geez, I didn't get that far.) It's just... well....
In conclusion: Nah.
xyzzysqrl's COMPLETE record-keeping concept, I may as well steal the NOT COMPLETE side too. I have a zillion games in the backlog, some have been languishing almost as long as I've been alive, but I do feel the need to make special record-keeping note of the ones where I tried them and now (just like the COMPLETE entries) I am done with this game.So, what's the first official failure of this project? Well, I almost didn't bother counting this one because I NOPE'd out of it in under ten minutes, but... well, that's about how long Essence.exe would have been if I hadn't gotten stuck, and that one got a COMPLETE entry, so what the hell.
MANOS: The Hands of Fate is a tongue-in-cheek indie game based off the infamous Mystery Science Theater 3000-featured movie of the same name. Apparently they throw in some other MST3K miscellany to pad things out (there's a boss fight with Ro-Man from Robot Monster according to this trailer?? Geez, I didn't get that far.) It's just... well....
- 1) I got the Android version as part of a Humble Mobile Bundle and the controls are hideous. See the left, right, B, and A buttons on the corners of the screen in that trailer? Using your touch screen, use those to... look, I know you can't exactly have an actual controller on a smartphone game, but this just does not work. At all. Not even in the best of times (I kind of gave up on Anodyne and the mobile version of Another World years ago before starting this write-up project, for much the same reason,) but especially not during a hectic boss battle when the A "button" is right next to my phone's actual built-in "pause and switch between apps" button.
- 2) Even if the controls themselves weren't an issue, your character is clunky and hard to steer, and a lot of enemies and projectiles feel literally undodgeable as a result. I'm not against brutally difficult 8-bit games, but I am against fake difficulty.
- 3) All this for what basically feels like "MST3K was great, right? LOL?"
In conclusion: Nah.