Balan Wonderworld

[mmmark]

I was just two and a half hours playing the Balan Wonderworld demo. It’s not half as bad as I’d heard on podcasts that had also clearly only played the first two levels of world one before turning it off and deciding to tell everyone it’s the worst game ever. 
 

The opening levels are a bit crap but the later sheep and the cog worlds are much better. I’m not talking Mario levels of quality but certainly gets better than the opening world. Plus the later costumes you find you can use when you go back to previous worlds to get to further trophies which in turn opens up more worlds.

 

The music is also better later on.

 

Not completely awful but an alright time waster and with so few games of its kind on xbox and PlayStation beggars can’t be choosers. 

[DisturbedSwan]

I put my thoughts in the demo thread, but yeah after the first two levels it definitely got a little better. There’s something about it that just takes me back to my childhood - as shit as it is - and there’s not many games as weird and bizarre as this out there.
 

I like to applaud originality and strangeness, as shit as this is, there’s hardly any games out there like it, so I’m gonna take a punt on it. 
 

Spoiler

I even pre-ordered it ??

 

[DisturbedSwan]

I streamed this drunk last Friday and completely forgot about it until a day or so later.

 

Enjoy.

 

 

[DisturbedSwan]

Started this last night and put about 4 hours into it. 
 

It hasn’t really improved all that much from the demo, there’s still one button for everything, the animation is terrible, the camera isn’t great and it’s still filled with bizarre moments like FOOTBALLER popping up in the middle of a level and requiring you to take free kicks against a clown. 
 

I think the visuals and camera have improved slightly from the demo, the former particularly in the hub world. Aside from that though if you thought played or saw the demo it is representative of the full game experience, if you didn’t like that, you won’t like this. 
 

Fortunately for me, I ended up strangely liking the demo despite its many (many) flaws and had a great time with it, that it made me want to pick up the full game upon release. I’m not disappointed either, I played for 4 hours last night and had to tear myself away from it in the end, didn’t want to put it down. 
 

There’s just something about it that is just such a nice escape from a lot of other games, it’s just a bit like exploring a bizarre dream world. It is so jolly, upbeat, charming and weird, it is like being transported back to the N64/PS1 era with no modern compromises to the early 00s vision. I never played NIGHTs so can’t compare it directly to that but to me it does feel and play very similarly to something like Banjo-Kazooie or Spyro, those collectathon platformers that were all the rage donkeys years ago.

 

You are placed in these colourful strange worlds and are tasked with finding all the Balan Statues (similar to Stars or Jaggies). They’re surprisingly hard to find at times, some you need to replay the stage with the correct costume to get. One is available by getting an ‘excellent’ score in Balan’s Bout, a bizarre mini-game where you have to match Balan’s silhouette up with his body.

 

In this day and age, it’s just weirdly refreshing and fun. I wouldn’t say I recommend it in the slightest as it isn’t a great game by any means, but if you’re into old platformers and want to go back to 2001 then this may be worth a go once it has bomba’d sufficiently in price. 

 

I streamed it for anyone that may  be interested (quality isn’t great as I’m currently staying at my parents house).

 

 

 

[DisturbedSwan]

Put another 3.5 hours in last night and a still having a lot of fun with this.

 

Finished off World 6 last night, it is definitely getting tougher to find the Balan Statues, in 6-2 I spent ages looking all round the level and only managed to find the 1 statue! World 6 is definitely the strongest so far, some great platforming in there and cool old school level design, it’s still just a ton of fun. 
 

I believe there are 12 worlds so I think I’m about half way through, it’s definitely longer already than I imagined it would be. There seems to be tons of replayability as well with having all the right costumes to get all the statues in a particular world and having to nail the ‘Balan’s Bout’ mini game in each world (to get one statue) along with the different techniques to take down the bosses for yet more statues. I have heard there are bonus stages that unlock after you finish it too. 
 

I can’t help but think that the reception would’ve been better if this was a cheaper Indie release and not a full priced Square Enix published title, but that’s the way it goes. I’ve not played The Hat in Time but this seems of a similar quality to me from what I’ve seen of it. 

[DisturbedSwan]

Finished this last night. 

 

Towards the end of my time with it my enthusiasm waned a bit it's fair to say, after all the bizarre weirdness kind of becomes normal halfway through or so you're just left with a relatively inoffensive, slightly above average platformer really. I will say that the level design gets better as the game goes on though, 6 is my favourite world by far but 10 is excellent too with a weird shifting staircase artist aesthetic going for it which makes the whole world feel like one strange puzzle as you try to find the path forward and collect Balan statues along the way. I think there may actually just be a little too much to it, I think it took me 18 hours to finish and that's without me getting anywhere near 100% statues or costumes, I think if you'd of knocked off the last two worlds the game would've been a better length. 

 

There is a ridiculous amount of replayability too, after I finished it a new 3rd stage in each World opened up, which means 12 more levels in all with 72 total more Balan Statues to collect. That's in addition to all the other Balan Statues I still have left to pickup if I choose to, so it's pretty bonkers how much time you could sink into it if you wanted to, definitely a great value proposition there in my view. But, the big issue with that is I'm not sure I can be arsed to go back, if this was a Mario game or something I'd be compelled to go back but after those 12 worlds I'm not sure I can be bothered. A large part of that is due to the Balan Bouts, which you need to do perfectly to get between 1-4 statues in each world, even worse is that you can't replay these straight away, you have to go and beat that particular Worlds' boss to be able to try the Bout again. Putting statues behind this weird QTE mini-game to be able to get 100% of statues is just shit and makes me not want to bother even if I wanted to try. 

 

The game has other flaws like the one button weirdness, losing costumes if you get hit (and then having to go back to a different world to pick them up again), a lot of the costumes being largely useless or exactly the same (there's about 4 different ones for just destroying iron blocks) and the story being a nonsensical weird fever dream with cutscenes placed just before and after a boss fight. A lot of these just faded into the background and didn't bother me after a few hours though.

 

I will say though that the game is technically competent (I didn't encounter 1 bug, glitch or issue during my playthrough) so some of the 2-3/10 reviews I've seen are a little baffling, as these kind of scores should be reserved for broken games in my view. I still maintain the game is a lot of fun with a lot of heart (its sincerity actually reminds me of Kingdom Hearts a bit) and that if it was cheaper and been an Indie release I think the whole discussion around it would've been much more positive. 

 

It gets a recommendation from me, even at full price as I think the value proposition is still good.

[AndyKurosaki]

Another entertaining video from Matt McMuscles, explaining just why this flopped spectacularly. 

[shinymcshine]

Sorry, but I always read it as Banal Wonderworld and therefore just assume its the videogame equivalent of Banky's Dismaland project.

 

Some reviewers tended to agree on that too..... (whether completely justified or not)

[mmmark]

My dyslexia has it switch between Banal and Bland.

[DisturbedSwan]