In Crisol: Theater of Idols, you hearth bullets of your personal blood at frenzied wood puppets whereas exploring an island saturated with disagreeable Spanish folklore. As elevator pitches go, I just like the immediacy of this one’s trade-offs. Blood? However I would like that stuff inside my physique to convey oxygen and important vitamins to my set off fingers. Certainly there are different fluids I can fill the bullets with. I get that it could immediate the much less horny type of revulsion, however Norman Reedus did get away with lobbing cannisters of piss and dribble in Dying Stranding.
Crisol has a demo on Steam as a part of this week’s Steam Nexus Festering. Being a fan of hideous marionettes and foetid folkliquorice, I used to be about to obtain it. However then my highly effective journalistic mind kicked into gear, and I realised that I would already tried Crisol at this 12 months’s Summer time Sport Fest. My belated verdict from again then: the doomy circus setting and scarlet-gold aesthetics are appetising, however the controls are tanky in a means that’s generally extra annoying than thrilling. It is also a bit creaky and compelled when it comes to situation design.
Right here is one such situation, which additionally seems within the beneath trailer: at one level I needed to cross via a tumbledown excessive avenue space patrolled by a colossal and unkillable jugger-puppet. This goal noticed me alternating between crouch-walking via the mud and ducking into retailers alongside the path to scoop up some consumables. Then I got here to a gate I needed to elevate by laboriously turning a crank for a second or two. Doing this locked me in place, unable to control the road behind. You get the concept.
It took me three makes an attempt, with the jugger-puppet chasing me again indoors every time. Whereas hiding inside retailers, I had the pleasure of staring absently on the creature’s crotch whereas it bellowed hoarse threats via home windows that have been certainly massive sufficient to confess its body. After 20 seconds of this, the roided-up Guignol would return to its patrol. I suppose this sort of ponderous scripting is sensible once you’re truly held collectively by strings.
Cristol’s total tone veers a bit uncertainly between Guillermo del Torrid art-housiness and Home of the Lifeless. Nonetheless, I fairly just like the wincing restraint imposed by the literal plasma gun gimmick, and the related stress to delve round within the crannies for sources of blood in addition to your self. I just like the webbed and brassy lustre of the vampiric weapons, particularly the shotgun, with its double-barrelled syringes. And I fairly benefit from the puppets, though they’re functionally Resident Evil 4‘s villagers of their plodding relentlessness and susceptibility to limbshots. Discover the demo right here.
