{"id":879,"date":"2023-09-09T21:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-09-10T03:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/zelda.pw\/VapidAether\/?p=879"},"modified":"2024-01-17T10:19:17","modified_gmt":"2024-01-17T16:19:17","slug":"25-hours-in-black-skylands","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zelda.pw\/VapidAether\/25-hours-in-black-skylands\/","title":{"rendered":"25 Hours In: Black Skylands"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I don’t consider myself a “gamer”, that is with a lower- or upper-case G. Yeah, sure, I play the occasional game, and while I wouldn’t consider that a hobby or a pastime of any sort, I can appreciate something that tickles a certain aesthetic & gameplay style. Black Skylands<\/em> is one of those games. It intrigued me. It dropped like something like two months ago, so naturally I snatched up. And, well? It’s an enjoyable if not incredibly shallow time sink.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Game<\/h2>\n\n\n
\n
\"Screenshot
Aww, this leaks neat.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Imagine a top-down, retro-pixel shoot and loot set in the sky. With customizable airships, floating islands, a mobile base, and yes, some base building involved. There’s a wide variety of guns and gun mods. There’s resources to harvest, islands to clear, and an end-game raid zone once you finish the main storyline.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So what’s not to love?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Well, the hand cramps of repetitively hitting the fire button since the only real tactic in this game is to put bullets in enemies until they’re dead. There’s some special abilities you can whip up, which either assist in keeping your own health bar filled or the enemies’ empty.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And it delivers everything it promised if you don’t mind any of it being not really well done. It’s like asking for a good hamburger and getting a Big Mac. Yeah, even if it looks exactly like the picture from the menu (because let’s be honest, this game is gorgeous for what it is), it’s still fast food.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I could dig into every aspect of the game but that would be exhaustive and bitchy. Though tbf, I have been described as exhausting and bitchy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \n
  • For reasons, airships are called skyships. World building? World building. These amount to a few base models. You can mod them out with Ship BucksTM<\/sup> to increase the base stats. When you switch to a different model, those upgrades transfer. There’s no circumstancial modifiers, no base model lock, no special abilities granted. It’s fairly transparent what upgrading your guns, rockets, wings, propeller, gas tank, storage hold, &c. do.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  • Gun modding involves opening a lootbox for an uninteresting visual mod that offers a slight bump to a weapon stat. Yeah sure you get Gun BucksTM<\/sup>, but there’s no point spending them for gun mods unless you’re impatient and don’t want to spend the time clearing islands and turning in the quest to clear that island. Only end game gun mods for end game guns are more “daunting” to find, which isn’t to say, at all.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  • There’s no tech or skill tree. You have a few special abilities you can buy with Special Ability BucksTM<\/sup>, and necklaces you can pick up from yet another kind of lootbox that actually offers something interesting and unique. Like stun greades, regenning health with every kill, which is pretty nifty.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  • You can find unique weapons. By find I mean mostly buy them with yet another in game currency. I don’t know, Unique Weapon BucksTM<\/sup> or something, and they’re Gun BucksTM<\/sup> upgradable. Unique weapons either have a fancy catch (like an assault rifle that fires in a curved arc), or just a fancy inventory model to look at. I haven’t found them all too different from regular weapons.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  • All enemies are bullet sponges, the only difference is how many bullets you have to put into them. There’s only a distinction between Weapon Group A for fleshy human air pirates and Weapon Group B for zergy zergs, but you really don’t have to think about it. Some enemies are weak against a certain ammo type.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n
    \"\"
    Behold the four currencies: On the left, gun bucks, ship bucks, and gold bucks, and taking up inventory space, special ability bucks.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

    Combat<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

    The shooting is fun. The mods add color laser sights, and you frequently have a line showing the weapon distance and spread. Even aereal combat is decent, and sometimes you’re jumping off the helm, refueling and patching up the ship mid battle.<\/p>\n\n\n

    \n
    \"\"
    I miss you big scary kraken on my minimap<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

    But who you’re fighting? Samesies. Different enemy tiers means they do more damage and take more bullets to put down. Once I shook things up from my usual trading of ammunition for generic air pirate fleshy human’s health bar, I had an encounter with an air kraken once. Just the once, and I fondly look back at our time together because killing the same mooks and skyships over and over again makes my eyes gloss over.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Don’t get me wrong, the repetitive combat never quite devolves into braindead boredom. It’s been laser focused down to something reminiscent of an addictive arcade game quality, but it can never fully be appreciated by a complete lack of a well done anything else. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Story<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

    …isn’t that great. You start as a spunky twelve-year-old, which offers Tutorial 1. Go through some dialogue about your dad, jump eight years to Tutorial 2 for some ship-to-ship combat, and if you forget to aim and fire a volley of cannons right, you’re stuck in an empty patch of world until you do. Clear the big mobile base skyship of fleshy humans, and that introduces you to the tedium: Show up somewhere red on the map, destroy ships in the sky & shoot guys on the land until everything turns blue. If you don’t catch on the first time, I’m sure you will the next three dozen times you do the same exact thing.<\/p>\n\n\n

    \n
    \"\"
    Is this an attempt at humanizing the nameless mooks that’re about to get a face full of buckshot to the face? Yes. Yes, it is.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

    You have plotlines of zergy zerg infestations cropping up, but mostly you’re going to an island, destroying ships in the sky & shooting guys on the land to turn things blue for Main Plot Point, which sometimes involves fighting one of Air Pirate Big Bad’s lieutenants in a boss fight. You get dialogue about why the Air Pirate Big Bad has actual grievances, but you’re the twenty-year old murderin’ Marshal ’round these parts, and you only know one way to solve problems: single-handedly shootin’ everyone until the game tells you to stop. There’s only quest so far where I think<\/em> there might have been a choice involved.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    The game does attempt to add character to the generic mobs you kill. But honestly, the off-beat banter between generic air pirate number 2 and generic air pirate number 9 ain’t witty or memorable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Final Thoughts<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

    It’s a visually spectacular world with tight combat mechanics, and there’s in-game notes you can find that explore the history and lore a little, but its inclusion is like everything else is shallow. Which is hilarious because you’re in an airship<\/s> skyship. In the air<\/s> sky. You’d think there’d be more depth.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Zelda played a video game and has some thoughts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,79],"tags":[81,76,41,82,77],"class_list":["post-879","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","category-vidya-games","tag-airships","tag-fantasy","tag-kinda-reviews","tag-steampumk","tag-video-games"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zelda.pw\/VapidAether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/879","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zelda.pw\/VapidAether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zelda.pw\/VapidAether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zelda.pw\/VapidAether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zelda.pw\/VapidAether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=879"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/zelda.pw\/VapidAether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/879\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":976,"href":"https:\/\/zelda.pw\/VapidAether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/879\/revisions\/976"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zelda.pw\/VapidAether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=879"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zelda.pw\/VapidAether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=879"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zelda.pw\/VapidAether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=879"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}