Capsized is a conflicting game, it combines very relaxing visuals and music with frantic and sometimes brutal combat. It really is something quite unique, in the first few levels, judging from the cute looking art style and minimal story, one would never guess how fast paced the game can get later on.
Story
The world of Capsized is a futuristic one, you seem to be some kind of deep space astronaut that crash-lands in a mysterious planet, full of hostile alien life. Alone, or with a buddy, you must fight, fly and grapple your way through several expansive campaign levels with the objective of saving your crewmates and hopefully escape the planet with your life.
The tale of our heroic astronaut is told through well designed and simplistic comic style artwork, these cutscenes only take place in-between levels and are easy to understand, never getting in the way of the gameplay which is always a plus.
Gameplay
For a 2D game, Capsized sure offers a lot of variety in terms of gameplay, for starters you will get to experience some typical platform sections where timing and precision are key, these jumps are usually assisted by other interesting gameplay elements like the hook-shot or the jet-pack.
Combat on the other hand is a lot more focused, sure, you can use your imagination as well, taking advantage of the game physics to squish some of the enemies, but usually you will just stick to your guns, at least the developer presents us with a lot of variety in this department, from a shotgun to a flamethrower you got a bit of everything here.
The world of Capsized is not without its faults though, enemy A.I. can be pretty cheap, don't be surprised if you get shot from off the screen, sometimes depleting more than half your health bar before you even get a chance to shoot back, it can be quite infuriating. The game has also a decent amount of bugs in it, achievements that are impossible to attain and random deaths are just some of the frustrating events that you will have to deal with when playing through Capsized, let's just hope that these problems get ironed out soon.
Graphics and Sound
Visually Capsized is very close to perfection, the 2D hand drawn scenery is something amazing to look at, combine that with very fluid character animations and you have a game that is a joy to play. You can actually feel the need to just stop moving and stare at everything that is going on for a few moments, all the lush vegetation and harmless animals that are walking around, the way they move and go about their daily lives is something that adds another degree of immersion to the title.
When you combine these fascinating visuals with the marvelous soundtrack, everything gets even better, Capsized delivers great performances on both of these areas, when you bind them together it takes the game to a whole new level of greatness.
Final Thoughts
This somewhat short adventure feels almost unique, it's the type of project that only an indie developer would have the courage to imagine and then execute. A shame that this Xbox port adds so little to the final experience, but still, the fact that console players will finally be able to get a taste of such a genuine indie pearl is already a very positive sign for our industry. Let's just hope that a patch to fix all the bugs is released soon.
Year of Release: 2013
Platform: PC, PS3, Xbox 360
Developer: Alientrap Games, Kool Haus Games
Publisher: indiePub, Namco Bandai Games
8 out of 10 (9 out of 10 if patch comes out)
NRLB would like to thank indiePub for providing a review copy of the game
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