Snake. This legless reptile has not enjoyed a very good PijaR since the Old Testament times. Despite this, over the years attempts have been made to slightly warm the image of the snake. For example, on some legendary telephones, a Finnish tragicomic monodrama about the struggle of a nice serpent with his self-destructive, pathological greed was displayed. The topic of the ambiguous, dualistic depiction of the snake was also taken up by the well-known Asian director Hideo FucKonami in his series of existential film miniatures showing the constant and fluid state of concentration of this reptile entangled in the post-Cold War conflict. And now the British from Sumo Digital have taken an interest in the subject, creating a sitcom filled with black humor called Snake Pass. After ours, of course - the Sezo Pass ... Serpent.
SNAKE PASS - The game was also released on Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One. Overall, after less than seven hours, I had finished the game, so I thought it was a good opportunity to do a little review. Besides, it's nice to finally play something for a change that doesn't take more than 40 or 50 hours. Snake Pass is the work of Sumo Digital creators - developers who have worked on many games, including the third part of Little Big Planet, but most of these titles were just such continuations, additions, or crap commissioned by the owner of some media brand. Snake Pass, meanwhile, is a production they came up with and did all by themselves, from start to finish. It is also a game on the Unreal engine, which had a simultaneous premiere on computers and modern generation consoles - including Nintendo Switch. And although I am discussing the PC version here, it is quite interesting to learn that the Unreal engine scales quite decently for the needs of a stationary-portable Switch - it can be a good omen for the future when it comes to multiplatform games that will also be released on new Nintendo hardware.
But let's deal with the game itself. The Snake Pass tells the story of a snake named Noodle - which could mean both noodles and a dumbass - and his friend, a blue hummingbird. The very fact that the main character calls a bird his buddy, and not, for example, dinner - shows that we are dealing here with a warming up of the image of snakes. Both friends live in a magical world of floating platforms that can be traveled through gem-powered gates. Of course, something bad happened, the jewels are gone, the gates are saying “we require more minerals”, so our protagonist - the reptilian protagonist, hehe - has no choice but to hit the road through a dozen or so levels full of, well, collectibles and gaps. In some ways, Snake Pass is a very classic platformer. Well, we go through the levels trying to find three obligatory gems and other optional collectibles - 20 bubbles and usually 5 more hidden coins. There are no enemies here, the only threats are chasms, spikes, and occasional hot coals. The player's greatest enemy is his dexterity and ... well, patience.
What's unusual about Snake Pass is that it's a platformer that we essentially don't jump into. The whole thing is controlled quite peculiarly with the help of physics and some specific rules. We can play with the keyboard and the mouse and even it is quite playable, but the thing was designed with the pad in mind and it is better to use this controller. One analog controls the camera, and the other moves the snake's head. In addition, we have a button to raise this head and, which is only useful in water, lowering it down. Well, there is a gas button ... i.e. moving in the direction indicated by the head and one more to close the buttocks ... well, our reptilian hero's sticking on objects - this increases the friction of his outer shell, which makes it less sliding off the bamboos and edge. Ah, and our hummingbird can hold the end of the tail on us to reduce the hero's weight when he tries to scramble onto something.
It is quite difficult to explain how it moves here, because the game, somewhat simplified and with unnaturally low gravity, emulates the snake physics quite well. If we try to glide straight ahead we will glide at the speed of a turtle, but if we start zigzagging we will significantly accelerate. To climb the objects, we have to steer the snakehead in such a way that it wraps around them, otherwise it will slide off them. And this is how we shorten our buttocks to stretch our neck for an object, we zigzag on the bamboos over the chasms, we wrap ourselves around the levers to switch them, we roll them into a ball to throw the body higher, all with simple, but very nice graphics and pleasant music, evoking associations with candy platformers of the Amiga computer era. And we die. We're dying. We're dying. You will not be fooled by the iced audio-visual setting of this game. It is not without reason that its hero is the serpent, symbolizing Satan. This game is hell. Nightmare. Playing it, you will remember profanity from languages that you don't even know. From the imaginary Hungarian paean to the dark, to the angry, frustrating monosyllables that our ancestors used to say when they saw the saber-toothed tiger. The first two levels are frustrating because we don't know how to steer this idiot yet. In the third, there are chasms and here we have a chance to get too many deaths, referring to Metal Gear Solid, and then there are moving objects, spikes, and air currents pushing our brave fringe into the abyss.
Snake Pass is hard. Fiendishly difficult and frustrating. Mainly because of the very specific movement mechanics. For the same reason, it can be rewarding and addictive. But this is a game for masochists and if you are not one of those players you will almost certainly throw it in a corner after an hour of torment. The levels are designed nicely, but it's a shame that the game offers quite little variety and doesn't introduce too many new mechanics during those 6-7 hours of play. For most of the fun, we do the same in increasingly difficult variants. The camera, which we theoretically fully control, is also irritating, but it has a tendency to turn in the direction of movement, which can irritate when the view over the precipice begins to show too little necessary information, and we cannot take our thumb off the button responsible for lifting the snake's head, to correct the perspective from which we are watching the action with an analog. After completing everything, we unlock the so-called "Snake vision" which allows you to see hidden collectibles through the walls and we can spend a few more hours playing to collect everything. I did not have the strength for it.
But despite the simplicity of the whole and the annoying camera, Snake Pass is an interesting, small title with original gameplay mechanics, which is worth getting interested in. If only you are ready to suffer for this game and understand why snakes have never had a very warm image. Well, happy adventures with the pasta-snake and his bird dinner, ahem, I mean buddy.
ALL IMAGES ARE FROM - https://www.xbox.com/en-IN/games/store/snake-pass/9nzv89bq8zwx