‘Poacher’ Review – Down The Rabbit Hole
Ben ‘Yahtzee’ Croshaw is not the most unassuming indie developer ever to have featured on IGM. His name carries weight – the kind of weight typically tied to a chain, embedded with bloody spikes and swung, gladiator-style into the faces of the most prolific AAA devs around. His judgement is frequent and sardonic, much less like his game releases which are often characterful, colourful, free from such sweariness and, comparatively, few and far between.
His latest title, Poacher, has a lot going for it. It’s smartly written and witty enough to raise a few audible sniggers. It’s also refreshingly rural in its thoroughly British leanings, using the *ahem* subtleties of the grand and historic Yorkshire dialect to inject a little northern spice into its unflappable protagonist, Derek Badger. Having said that, as someone of English residence, it’s hard to know how many of those overseas will pick up on the humour within the game or even consider the authenticity of some of the dialogue.
Badger, poacher extraordinaire, is a great character. With his head covered almost entirely by an oversized flat-cap, he comes armed with a shotgun and imbued with an unsociable desire to shoot bunnies right between their big, dumb eyes. Whilst caught poaching within the territory of an (understandably) obtuse landowner they both fall Wonderland-style into the ungodly world below. From then on it’s a battle between darkness and light, but also between you, the player, and a whole load of precision platform gaming.
Poacher is built around a fairly standard Metroidvania template. For the most part you’ll be blasting your shotgun every which way at anything foolish enough to inhabit the same screen space. There are friendlies too – some daft blue protohumans and their holier-than-thou spirit cousins. To the game’s credit, interactions with the locals are often enlightening and amusing and outside of these the shooting is pleasantly responsive. Direct hits really matter and, when correctly tagged, creatures explode into a satisfying bundle of blood and coins, just like in real life. There isn’t a great deal more to combat beyond memorising attack patterns and dropping any equipped special powers, but it manages well enough to entertain.
The world of Poacher is open in the sense that you can eventually travel anywhere you want, but not in the sense that anywhere you want to go will be easy to navigate to. The environment is split into complex themed areas; an oil rig, a great library, mines and a forest – the variety in locations is always apparent even if your sense of direction isn’t and wandering back and forth along routes well trodden can soon become wearing. Before too long, though, you’ll at least be provided with a basic map, a spirit guide and a slew of upgrades with which to aid you in reaching previously impossible locations. It’s the standard format: exploration followed by a boss fight and back again, at times interrupted by a number of neat puzzles that require knowledge of both the map and adjacent screens in order to reach new objectives or secrets.
What lets the game down, in part, is the inconsistent checkpointing, save areas that require the player to backtrack or travel out of their way in order to secure some peace of mind. I’m sure there are gamers out there who prefer their thirty minutes of deadly platforming to be memorialised solely by a fist-shaped indentation in the wall beside them, but I’m not one of them. I could go on about this, probably, but for the style of game and the likely challenge that comes from a single developer building and populating a non-linear game world, will anyone really be surprised when confronted with a difficulty curve you could easily abseil down? In fact, I was only truly shocked to discover save points situated prior to lengthy, semi-skippable cutscenes immediately preceding boss battles. Nothing kicks like experiencing the same conversation for the tenth time immediately prior to getting your arse handed to you in seconds… for the tenth time.
Further grumbles arise out of the basic key controls which, at times, can be a tad fiddly, particularly when the game refuses to register a number of instantaneous key-presses for trickier timed jumps. Believe me when I say that some nimble finger-work was required in order to progress, but in the face of adversity I did strive – against all of these issues, in fact, along with the creatures and their bosses and the labyrinthine settings in which they all resided.
When Ben Croshaw releases a game as many people will look to dislike it unduly as those who will wish it well on its journey from screen to eye to mind. One thing undoubtedly working in his favour is the price at which this Yahtzee-brand entertainment is offered up. What we have with Poacher – as with all of his previous games – is a free release, a fact which instantly softens any stones that I, or indeed anyone, might chuck at it.
Clearly, if you bemoan the experience on hand here you had just as well uninstall it from your life and forget about it. My purpose in reviewing Poacher is not to help you decide whether to part with your cash, but simply whether to click on a link and designate any or all of your time to playing and completing this game. And, with this in mind, I can honestly say that Poacher is a solid attempt at channeling Metroid’s heart and soul through the belly and bowels of a gruff northerner. It’s an interesting perspective and there’s enough good humour to carry the player through any extended bouts of frustration, but it is punishing, hard enough that I felt compelled to opt for the quicker, ‘bad’ ending just so I could avoid putting any more time into locating missing pieces of the overarching plot. Those with stronger wills and less strict schedules might well beg to differ. To them, I say: fetch your gun and go hunt yourself some Dark Ones.
Poacher is available to download from Yahtzee’s personal blog, here. Version 1.1 has already been released and includes bug fixes, customisable controls, achievements and a brand new ‘easy’ mode not previously available. The above review was based on the original 1.0 release.
Review summary Pros:
Satisfying shooting mechanics, some smart puzzling, well implemented upgrade mechanics, great dialogue.
Cons:
Infrequent checkpointing, retreading old ground can become wearing, unskippable conversations.
Rating: 71%
