Some things piss me off. You will certainly not witness public debate on feminism, SJWs or safe spaces on this article, or even my position on the matter. What I can say is that this media scandal made so many people think that the world should be shaped according to their likings and opinions, even if that translates in oppressing others.
Two months old Kotaku writer Cecilia D’Anastasio published some days ago that Furi was the wrong kind of hard, saying that she wanted to like it more (possibly, and understandably, because of the game magnificent aesthetics’). She wished the game to be more “tactical”. Hmm.
Lets look at the following game for a moment, shall we?
Ueda’s 2005 masterpiece, Shadow of the Colossus, is a one of a kind boss game. If you’ve not played it, you should at least try it out before it is too late (assuming the game can become obsolete or unbearable to play, exactly as my relationship with Final Fantasy VII). It came out originally for the PlayStation 2 and, aside from the technological innovations it brought, it is one of the most successful examples on how to communicate emotions from short spoken narratives and mechanics. There’s a lot in this game that resonates in the videogame industry, and certainly in Furi.
Furi is a boss battle game where, well, you battle bosses. And that pretty much sums it up. When I first picked it up I wasn’t really sure what to expect, just like any other unknown PlayStation Plus game, I only knew it was console exclusive on the PS4 and Takashi Okazaki was somewhat involved. After the first boss battle (that’s also a tutorial) I was amazed with the graphical aspect of this game and the “wow!” it pulled from me. The amount of bullets on the screen mimicked some of the sickest bullet hell games I’ve played and the amount of neon glow makes me want to run to my bathroom, kneel, puke rainbows like a unicorn on LSD as seen in some TV show in the eighties, on a random pirate TV station. Holy Molly, this game is sick!
And it’s in this sickening dubstep (but not dubstep fuelled, since the soundtrack has some of the greatest techno and electronic music I’ve heard since the last WipeOut instalment) that you can find an extremely well brought up combat, and certainly one of the most fluid combat mechanics I’ve played in a long time. Fear not, there’s no annoying lag on this game (as was stated in Kotaku’s article) and most importantly, if lag really exists (not that I honestly noticed), it’s sound and correctly implemented in a way that the whole gameplay flows on the environment it lives. Yes, the sound effects play a important role on the combat and you must always be aware of them if you are looking for consistent results on parrying and dodging. If you are booting up Furi to learn and ace, you will find what you’re looking for. It is extremely simple to learn (since it uses only 3 buttons, two analog sticks and one trigger) and relatively hard to master, given some combat situations you’re put into.
The same way Shadow of the Colossus uses the horse rides between colossi as a way of contrast with the battles (making a little more space for us to find a comfortable position on our sofa), the sections between bosses on Furi are made with the same purpose: To lower your bpm, to give you a chance to pour some more cola in your lemon slice filled cup and get a handful of peanuts. In addition to this, they’re used to understand more about the world and the plot, to know the only character that stays with you long enough to create some empathy. However, the MC is so determined in his objectives that it doesn’t even matter. If you play the same way as I do (and I highly recommend) just press the X button (so that you don’t have to control the character and don’t have to deal with character movement that sometimes has it’s own head to think and make decisions for you) enjoy the landscapes and stress out from the twenty minutes you’ve spent chocking the remote with maximum concentration.
Furi is a great game, possibly one of the greatest I’ve played in years in the action genre. I did not end my journey but I surely will (maybe platinum trophy is pushing a little bit too hard). What I can really say beyond this is that Furi is the best game it tries to be and there’s so few things to anything at all I would do differently.
As for the Kotaku employee, probably I shouldn’t mind her. We live in an age where everyone has an opinion on everything, and not just that, but the strongest opinion on everything. If I can’t recall the last time I saw someone on the internet with enough lack of ingenuity to reconsider his own point of view on a subject, why should I expect that people can’t dissociate quality of personal interest. Not every game is made for you, not every game is made for me.
