Impressions: Tinertia
Oh my goodness… I don’t think I’ve gotten this frustrated with a game since ESJ: Groove City. Tinertia sets itself up to be a hardcore platformer and they succeeded. Maybe a bit too much success for my personal tastes, but it succeeds none-the-less.
I like a good challenge. I appreciate it when games don’t hold your hand and actually make you think. Tinertia will do that in two ways. First up there’s the controls. They tout that they don’t have a jump button. You’ll be rocket-jumping your way across the maps. That also means you’ll have to pick an angle to shoot the rockets out. You’ll need good angles to get across wide gaps filled with all sorts of things that will make you restart the level. While that would be easy enough, you still have to control your movements aside from the rocket-jumping. If they would have made the game without this, it would have possibly been a bit easier. Then again, “easy” wasn’t what the developers were going for.
To paint a picture to what I’m dealing with here and my lack of skill, there are eight stages in total. If the pattern holds, there will be nine levels each plus a boss stage at the end. I was stuck on the fourth* of nine levels on the first stage for so long it felt like forever. The kicker was, it was about five minutes! I’m not one for rage-quiting, but I do turn the game off frequently knowing that I don’t want to go to that place (bottom of the article).
*Edit: I’ve now made it to the eighth stage! Hey! It’s progress!
Aesthetically, the game is fantastic. Everything runs smooth and looks good doing it; even dying was kind of shiny. The levels, character design and overlays that tell you what’s up in-game all look good. This is one of those games on Steam Early Access that seem to exist simply to make other Early Access games look bad. Overall I enjoyed my time while and I’ll inch my way through this game if I have too. I at least want to see a boss!
