Aztaka review game

Aztaka gets this balance right and this is largely because enemies aren't scaled. If you run ahead then the difficulty increases and inevitably you need to improve your character to proceed. The cool thing here is that the player can dynamically increase the challenge to their desired level by advancing through the game more quickly.

The consequence of this is that Aztaka feels extremely well balanced, because fundamentally it is as challenging as you want it to be. While Aztaka is a linear game overall there is plenty to explore and investigate on your journey.

Each area has multiple branching paths to follow that lead to different places, and secrets are scattered throughout to reward the curious. There are also parts of the world that can only be accessed once a certain item or power has been gained and knowing that these restricted places exist helps the world seem more mysterious.

To cap it off the detailed hand drawn backgrounds add a touch of personality and atmosphere to the experience. Another stand out part of Aztaka is the combat. To fight enemies you physically stab them with your spear, which deals them damage based on your items and stats. Each enemy has it's own distinct fighting style which can be figured out and exploited once understood.

Moderating all of this is how powerful you are, after a while old enemies won't require the careful confrontation they initially did. This combination of skill and power gives combat a good graded challenge and makes it diverse and enjoyable. Now hang on a second! Didn't I compare Aztaka to salted, barbed wire at the start of this review? Until you earn points all your submissions need to be vetted by other Giant Bomb users.

This process takes no more than a few hours and we'll send you an email once approved. This edit will also create new pages on Giant Bomb for: Beware, you are proposing to add brand new pages to the wiki along with your edits. Make sure this is what you intended. You learn some nice new moves along the way, such as being able to hurt enemies whilst performing air flips, but overall it's very tedious and most enemies seem to be damage sponges that take forever to die, not to mention shrugging off your hits whilst you're attacking them, meaning you'll always be getting hit back whilst attacking.

And as you go, you keep meeting the same enemies per area again and again and again. Eventually you stop fighting them and just flip over them, because some of the latter levels are just way too long and convoluted. I got fed up when I ended up in some ant cave full of giant ants everywhere.

The level went on forever and I just kept getting lost, and when I died, I'd just start back in it because the game autosaved and you can't save manually. So I'm essentially stuck there and can't go back. It's really a shame, because some other levels, like Ehecalk Temple, were designed pretty well and were fun to explore. It's as if the devs ran out of ideas at some point and just started throwing in really long and repetitive levels with dozens of enemies everywhere.

I also don't quite understand some of the enemy choices. Whereas Jaguar warriors and haunted masks were quite fitting to the Aztec setting, on the other hand Centauri were out of place. Don't expect to find much of a story in the game either. Although it starts as though you're on someone's trail, eventually it just boils down to "go and collect these 7 phonograms all over the world".

Overall I am quite disappointed. It started off as a promising game, but then lost its footing very quickly and turned into a very average sidescroller with gameplay issues. If you're really curious to try the game still, I'd suggest to just get it when it's on sale. Essential Links. By Metascore By user score. All Current Games ».

Psychonauts 2. The Forgotten City. Clone Drone in the Danger Zone. As the player progresses in the game, he gains containers that allows him to store on-screen energy particles for later use.

The mouse is also used to cast spells, both offensive and defensive, by selecting them from the bottom-screen magic inventory and then clicking at on-screen targets in succession to launch them.

The gameplay is reminiscent of an old-school action role-playing game. The player climbs, crawls and jumps his way around a level to explore it and find new items. Experience points are gained for every enemy killed, and they are spend to upgrade the character's attributes and special skills.