fuckin sick
Reviews for "360 Degrees"
Pretty rad game! Definitely quite the juicy game with tons of wild music, crazy animations, and all of it with a cool analog control scheme that is unique, intuitive and feels neat to get used to, much like learning how to skateboard. Going for the bonus objectives was a fun challenge as well and brought me back to those Tony Hawk days. All in all, very fun stuff: love the character's totally tubular animations, even as he smashes his balls for the hundredth time!
Now, with that good stuff out of the way, let's get into the problems I had, haha:
The control scheme is a bit frustrating to get used to. Don't get me wrong, I think it is very neat how analog it is, but I found myself many a time doing circles with my mouse, expecting it to do a kickflip, but all he'd do is wiggle the board slightly: it was only then that I noticed my mouse had trailed off to the side and, while it was making circles, it wasn't making them around the player character. I would much prefer if the controls made the mouse locked within a certain radius of the player so that you can't trail off. Or, at the very least, it'd help if I could maintain visibility of my mouse cursor, but I found that really hard without the game providing a virtual cursor. And that brings me to my point below:
I do feel like the game is a bit too loud (color-wise and sound-wise) and overly animated at times: it's juicy, but this is to the point where it is visual and audio chaos and it makes it difficult to parse what the heck is happening at times. A contrast is needed: if everything is loud, it just becomes the norm, a mush where nothing stands out. At the very least, I'd love it if the background was desaturated or blurred, or you only use bold outlines on characters and interactables: any of these changes would help make the critical elements pop and maintain visibility. I also like how you use the pitch shifting sounds and screenshake and other such techniques, but it is used in such over frequency with so many things that it loses any impact.
I didn't like how when you complete a combo, it just disappears instantly: I want the combo I made and the points I earned to stay on screen for a few seconds so I could see what I achieved. The combos disappearing so fast made it feel ultimately pointless: at least maybe have an animation showing the points swooping up to the total score or something.
The tutorial was decent, but I didn't like how I couldn't control the pace of the instructions it gave out: it moving at its own pace meant there were a lot of times where I just had to sit there waiting, or I was frustrated that it went by when I was still practicing.
There's a couple of other minor issues, like how you have an animation for charging up an ollie but it doesn't make any difference on the height you gain, and how some of the rails drop you too early before you'd think they'd end, but I won't harp on about it because at the end of the day it was still a fun game and my issues, such as the control schemes, were possible to get through with practice. Thanks for putting this together and it's cool to see the collab power on display with all the graffiti and such: ingenious!
Oh, by the way, there's a bit of a weird issue where, if you never click on the game to focus it in the first place even if it is already technically loaded, it will just be loading forever: hopefully everyone clicked but I'd hate if someone just left thinking it was taking too long to load, haha, it almost happened to me!
As another side note: this isn't an issue with the game, but rather an issue with me where I had a hard time going for combos in this because I was always against using manuals as a means of extending combos in games like Tony Hawk. I don't know why: something deep in me back in the day always felt it was a bit silly or cheating or inelegant or something to extend combos through manuals, and now I have a weird mental block against them. Wonder if anyone else suffers from this?
Stepford responds:
Thanks for the extensive and kind review! The game itself was developed in two weeks for a "Weird Input" prompt for a class, so the controls are intentionally a bit tricky to get used to. Sort of like Getting Over It, I wanted there to be 'expression' that was difficult to master but simplistic in terms of interactivity. There is a "Mouse Guide" option in the settings which might help you a bit when it comes to keeping track of your mouse position.
The game was also intentionally over the top, loud, annoying and visually gross. Sometimes I just get so disgusted at AAA titles and their coddling and I just want to make something stupid and crazy. Something that intentionally tries to give people headaches because I want to challenge people and deliver something they haven't seen before. It sounds crazy but I would rather upset people than have them walk away getting 'what they expected' i am a crazy person
For the combo, I was gonna have all the letters explode across the screen but I just ran out of time. The next project for class started so I had to wrap it up in a day or two. Unnfooooortunate, but u live and u learn.
Tutorials continue to be the bane of my existence. Part of me just wants to have a big notepad of text that people can read at their own pace, but nobody will ever do that. :((
-- For your combo mental block, I think it's because the earlier games had a super janky revert animation. It felt like cheating to come down from a ramp, hit revert, slowly spin your board around and THEN start manualing. It felt a bit strange, but as later titles came out, the revert and manual animations became snappier and it became a much more natural feeling part of the game. There was also a lot less things to do while manualing back then, so you would have to go long distances not doing any air tricks or accelerating.
Jacob responds:
Excellent review! Can't personally address most of it, but there's an option which draws a line to your cursor's position.
I also struggled before turning it on.
This game is just oozing with style
i wish the visuals were a bit more refined. they're a bit hard to focus on. Still good, but my point stands.
Sick game, though the lack of fullscreen in a game that rewards you for moving your mouse along the edge of the screen is almost a deal breaker.
Why is theater mode no lnger a thing anyway?