Game Review #264: Uurnog Uurnlimited (Nintendo Switch)
Reviewer: A.J. Splutter Developer: Raw Fury Publisher: Raw Fury Category: Puzzle, Platformer Release Date: 11.21.17 Price (at time of review): $14.99
Buy Uurnog Uurnlimited from the Nintendo Switch eShop here.
Classic Puzzles in a Neon Overworld Uurnog Uurnlimited is a puzzle platformer set in a neon-filled world. Before the game starts, you can pick between a set of predetermined characters to play as. Once chosen, you jump right into the action… well, sort of - the first few minutes of the game is an extremely long loading screen—roughly just over a minute, no longer than 1min 30secs—that was giving me mental flashes of my time with Sonic 06, though unlike that monstrosity, after the first loading screen, nothing else in the game needed to load before I was on my way. As soon as I entered the game however, I felt at a loss. I couldn’t move my character at all. I was honestly perplexed, and it took me a few good minutes to realize that this retro feeling 2-D puzzle platformer is controlled with the thumbstick—no D-Pad option for moving—which was quite jarring, and let’s just say messed with me, as I’ll go over later in the review.
The audio is semi-dynamic, changing depending on where you are in the world and what foes you’re facing—some people may fall in love with the soundtrack, but for me personally, it was a bit too sporadic and unorganized to be something I’d want to listen to for more than five minutes, and I sadly found myself putting on a podcast to drown out the beeps and boops of the soundtrack.
The Challenge The main objective is to explore the world through entering doors in the main hub room and collecting each of the animals scattered around the levels to appease some robotic overlord, as it seems. I highly enjoyed exploring the world to pick up new keys to unlock new challenges, but I did find myself getting lost remembering which doors lead where with the high amount in the hub room. I would have much preferred a colored system to tell me which area belonged to which door, but beggars never choose.
Though you’re allowed to bring four to five items into each challenge room, once you pull them out to use them as either a weapon or an extra jump, you can’t put them back in your inventory (marked as a Skull item inside the room and in your inventory menu). Though a nice idea, this had me merely farming items before reattempting the challenge, so all it added was extra playtime for me. You also die in two hits—very occasionally one—which wasn’t a big deal, but with the amount of acrobatics you need to perform and the tricky and precise platforming, you may run into trouble, as I did.
Controlling the Beast Within One of my major complaints are the controls. In Uurong, you control your character’s movement with the thumbstick, while the D-Pad was reserved for a four-slot inventory which had you storing items and pulling them back out of your hammer space with a simple press of a direction. This would be fine if the game didn’t have you rely on timing your jumps or platforming, which really hindered my progress—and there was also no option to tweak this in the menus, which was the first thing I tried to do.
As briefly mentioned before, the thumbstick controls really took me out of the experience. It wasn’t a deal-breaker, but 90% of my deaths were because of the thumbstick being harder to precisely control than a D-Pad would have been. I get why they did it, but I wish they used the thumbstick directions as item management, as that would have felt more natural for this type of game. It was also a bit of an odd choice to assign the grab action to the ZL button. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’m no stranger to quick button presses and tangling my hands around a controller, but double-jumping by throwing objects and jumping off them mid-air, then repeating through your hammer space had me moving my fingers like I was playing Bayonetta, without the satisfaction of a no-hit pure perfect medal as a reward.
Final Thoughts Despite my seemingly negative remarks, I did enjoy my time with the game—however, due to the control setbacks, it turned my playtime into slight frustration. I would definitely pick up this game and have another go, but I do need to give my hands and head some rest just in case I break a controller. The puzzles were fun to figure out, and the challenge rooms were fun to overcome, but the package as a whole was tainted. You might not have the same experience as me, and I highly recommend you give it a go. Just be warned, you will need some time to practice the controls.
Score: 6/10
Buy Uurnog Uurnlimited from the Nintendo Switch eShop here.
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*Review Code Provided by Raw Fury