Sayonara Umihara Kawase, apart from being a hell of a tongue twister, a Japanese platformer that started life way back when on the SNES. A simple platformer based around the 19-year-old protagonist Umihara, she is in another world, everything is trippy, and giant fish roam the land.
10/10 for imagination.
It’s a platformer split up over 40+ levels, you need to make your way to the end and leave via the door, to do this you need to jump climb and throw your…. fishing rod. Yep, this game has a grappling system and works really well, throw it on a wall and jump and you will be catapulted depending on your angle. It works as you wold expect, there are a few parts where I seem to swing and fly much faster than expected.
Level design is quite nice , with levels at the start being pretty simple, and forgiving for you practising your swinging abilities, and a secret thrown out here and there. They are levels that can be finished pretty quickly, and I got through the first handful without much difficulty. As you go along the levels start to get more difficult with less forgiving swings and some being rather difficult, but never so much that it feels unfair. It has a similar design to Super Meat boy, one of my favourite platformers, where you always know you made the mistake, I was never left blaming level design or bad positioning of grapples in the levels, I always knew it was my own mistakes that cause the fail.
Within levels you have hazards to deal with, these can be pit falls, spikes, conveyer belts that move you or your grappling hook to another location, trampolines to let you jump higher and more that help with the puzzle of each level being slightly different. All of these felt well placed and never forced upon you in a level which is nice. Fish roam the levels and you need to catch them with your grappling hook fish rod to stun them. Now when you touch them I thought for a while that you just stick them in your bag, but maybe you throw them off screen? I like to think there is a sub plot of her needing fish to fend for her family, maybe.
There are a few boss levels scattered around, which give a different spin on things, and also secret items and rooms found in levels, these can go from, “Oh this is easy”, to “How the hell was I supposed to know that”, but for completionists it’s nice to have.
Whilst this series is rather long legacy, spanning quite far back, we do have some different characters to play as, as you progress through the game. Some include an older version of Umihara, and a police woman who can control time. The added features that these characters bring to the game are quite fun, though nothing completely game changing that I would consider them anything more than a slight distraction to the main game.
Graphically the game is not amazing, and personally I would have`1`1 enjoyed an updated 2D game instead of using 3D models, as it can look a bit blurry and inconsistent in places. When looking at games such as Rayman or other remakes such as Duck Tales (A woohoo), It really shows how timeless good pixel art can be, and when updating a game from 2D to 3D, to keep that same style can be tough, and in this case I wish it had stayed 2D. But saying that, they have managed to keep the style looking similar to what the original game did look like, but I am a fan of 2D sprites, especially if the original was 2D. Though I wonder if it is because it could be a port of the 3DS or Vita versions.
Whilst this is a remake of an older game, with some new updated graphics, there are some quality of life that could definitely be made. Whilst it does support the 360 controllers, it doesn’t seem to work with the analogue stick only D-Pad which makes it a little bit awkward to use. Also the fact that the control scheme is what Japanese are used to, that being A is back and B is select, and I won’t lie I mixed these up just a few times to many to not be annoying. Other things such as holding Down to go up on your reel is…. a little confusing, it can be changed in menus, but it took be longer than usual, maybe because I just wasn’t thinking. My only other gripe is the physics not working exactly as you would expect can make some platforms very awkward to get too.
Overall this is a very Japanese game, and it has that platformer vibe where it holds your hand for a while that a lot of main stream platformers have these days. However if you have played any of them before, or passed on the Vita/3DS versions of the game and want a PC release, that is there too. I think that it is a game that does much for non-fans of the series, it offers them a simple and thoughtful platformer, that tests more on their thinking than ability to move a character, much like a 2D portal game. It is a nice game with some elements that might not appeal to western gamers, but I doubt they are the demographic anyway, 4/5 overall, but only because of the quality of graphics I feel lets the game down a little too much.
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