To me, Brian Jacques’ Redwall sequence is mentally pigeonholed alongside Watership Down, Animals of Farthing Wooden and Secret of Nimh. These are animal-led properties from the ‘80s and ‘90s that I discovered to be splendidly made, beautiful and evocative, however they had been liable to show round and emotionally intestine punch me. Simply as I’d get cosy, a useless hedgehog, rabbit or mouse would seem in my lap. They had been all emotional minefields.
So, we went into The Misplaced Legends of Redwall: The Scout Anthology with mouse-like trepidation. Our whiskers twitched and we may really feel the itching of outdated wounds.
Because it occurs, we needn’t have fearful – not less than, not about that. The Misplaced Legends of Redwall: The Scout Anthology isn’t significantly concerned with tugging on the heartstrings. That is extra a take of mousey derring-do. However there was a minefield of a unique kind: as a result of The Misplaced Legends of Redwall: The Scout Anthology wobbles wildly between being perfunctory and chuck-the-pad infuriating.
The Misplaced Legends of Redwall: The Scout Anthology was initially launched as a sequence of three Telltale-like episodes, that are gathered collectively to kind this launch. The check is whether or not you may make it via the primary of those episodes. The entire recreation’s frustrations are concentrated on this chapter (Soma Video games do not less than some course-correction in episodes two and three), so it turns into each a demo of every thing that’s improper with the sport, and a gauntlet that it’s important to cross via to get to the marginally higher stuff.
The primary episode strains up the issues neatly so that you can sniff via, one after the other. Initially, you possibly can inform that The Misplaced Legends of Redwall: The Scout Anthology is predicated on a sequence of books, as a result of it typically feels such as you’re studying all of them. There’s loads of textual content right here, whether or not in cutscene, journal or dialogue format, and whilst you can skip them, you’re nonetheless doing an terrible lot of skipping.
The standard of the writing isn’t dangerous, it’s only a tad humdrum. The varied animals you chat to all fear about survival, one another and their very own psychological states, which is considerable as some rats have invaded and everyone seems to be preventing merely to outlive. However the dialogue meanders, the journals are absolute bibles that solely Jacques fans will lap up (did we actually want some cooking recipes in there?), and the cutscenes are inclined to linger about twice so long as they must. A framing gadget of a mouse being informed the story in opposition to a backdrop of a theatrical efficiency finally ends up feeling pointless, and solely serves to pad.
And why is every thing so brown? The world of Redwall feels prefer it’s been carved out of an outdated oak tree, which is efficient at first however doesn’t half turn into fatiguing by the tip. We half-wanted the blood to movement, simply so we may get some color into the surroundings.
But it surely’s not the wordiness that galls with The Misplaced Legends of Redwall: The Scout Anthology. It’s the way in which it feels on the sticks. Controlling Liam or Sophia, the sport’s two Lilygrove Scouts, doesn’t really feel satisfying in any respect.
The Misplaced Legends of Redwall: The Scout Anthology is a third-person journey, so there’s a deal of motion and traversal, as you soar, seize and slide via the degrees like Lara Croft at 1:24 scale. However the motion is sluggish, the leaping has a slippery slide to it, and maneuvers like climbing are extremely stiff, shifting you solely in cardinal instructions. The blocking within the ranges, too, retains getting in the way in which, as invisible limitations are simply as potent an enemy because the rats. The sport retains gesturing vast to its world, saying “go, discover!”, however then confines you to very particular locations.
The world isn’t significantly readable, both. Ledges may look grabbable once they aren’t. Ladders will be climbable or ornament. Holes for burrowing are so extremely small and, sure, brown, making them troublesome to identify. Different mounds of earth appear like they’d be diggable, however aren’t. You possibly can drop down from some areas with out a problem, whereas others kill you outright.
This lack of legibility is none extra deadly than within the recreation’s puzzles. Sometimes, The Misplaced Legends of Redwall: The Scout Anthology needs you to push blocks round and remedy environmental dilemmas, however the constituent elements of the puzzle are exhausting to differentiate from background stuff. A gap within the backside of a wall turns into important, whenever you’ve handed holes prefer it loads of occasions earlier than. On a few events – one close to the beginning, one close to the tip – we needed to resort to walkthroughs after giving up.
However the place The Misplaced Legends of Redwall: The Scout Anthology will get most of its gameplay from is stealth. Stealth in half-baked video games offers me the willies: it needs to be carried out effectively, as stealth is a one-hit kill that undoes your whole good work. For those who really feel cheated, it might hearth a poison-dart into your enjoyment. And in The Misplaced Legends of Redwall: The Scout Anthology, it’s poor.
The one notable concept in The Misplaced Legends of Redwall: The Scout Anthology is a scent system: a model of Batman Arkham Metropolis’s Detective Mode the place you possibly can apply a layer onto the sport world and see smells. It’s fab, and works effectively all over the place besides stealth. As a result of now you may have a scent-trail following behind you, and it’s important to get that via a stealth maze, and never simply your mouse. It’s like being Hitman, however you’ve unwittingly received a roll of bathroom paper caught to your foot. Enemies can discover you OR your lengthy, dangling scent, so that you’re desperately attempting to maintain inventory of what they’ll see AND sniff. It’s a ballache, and ballaches are hardly ever enjoyable.
The Misplaced Legends of Redwall: The Scout Anthology appears to acknowledge this in episodes 2 and three, and turns stealth right into a puzzle quite than an advanced, systemic method like Hitman. It does wonders, nevertheless it’s nonetheless not good: enemies swing pendulum-like between being dumb or psychic, and it by no means fairly feels proper that ringing bells will distract a rat ceaselessly. It turns into much less more likely to trigger a rage-quit, nevertheless it’s hardly nice.
The final nail in The Misplaced Legends of Redwall: The Scout Anthology’s coffin is a few wacky, misplaced sequences that don’t a lot lack refinement, as really feel like they emerged from the mines that morning. Chase sequences attempt to emulate Crash Bandicoot, however nearly nothing about them works. Each the primary character and the enemy dance round like drunkards, and we ended up hammering buttons within the hope that it will all finish.
Every part about The Misplaced Legends of Redwall: The Scout Anthology screams ‘this was rushed’. Maybe the episodic launch construction was in charge, tying Soma Video games to dates that they couldn’t hit.
As a result of whereas The Misplaced Legends of Redwall: The Scout Anthology is earnest, and Redwall followers will lap up the additions to the lore, it’s additionally ragged. Stealth, platforming and puzzles are all tried, and never one feels something lower than patchy. It finally ends up as stuffed with holes as Swiss cheese.
