Well colour me convinced!MX7 wrote:I think Umihara Kawase is very similar to a lot of STGs: you really get out of it what you put in. Someone once said (on the old ikaruga.co.uk forum that you only really start to understand Ikaruga after ~400 hours of play. Now, I haven't sunk that much time into Ikaruga, or indeed any other game, but I have with Umihara Kawase. If the controls seem clunk at first, it's because you are being given a tool-set with absolute flexibility. Consider it like learning to play the guitar. At first, your hands will numbly fumble with even the most basic chords. As time goes on and you commit these actions to muscle memory, the chords shapes become essentially subconscious. It's exactly the same with Umihara Kawase. As you become familiar with basic techniques (the Tarzan swing, the wall climb, the rocket jump), you find yourself messing around with variations of these techniques, showboating, and honing them to perfection. In the Zelda games, for example, you face an insurmountable obstacle and must obtain an item to render it passable. In Umi, you can theoretically do everything from the outset: the only thing holding you back is your skill.
As you progress, the initial flaws start to seem insignificant. Many of the more frustrating parts can be bypassed entirely. The tadpole boss is a bore, sure, but on the shortest (and in my opinion best) route you don't have to fight it at all. Most enemies can also be bypassed entirely, though it takes practice.
The graphics and music are odd. And I love them. The fuzzy black and white sea scapes are like something out of a dream. The music seems weirdly contrapuntal to the game's punitive difficulty. If the foreground graphics seem a bit drab, it's because anything else would detract and distract from the often pixel perfect rope-work required.
It's not for everyone, but that's what makes it so good. It requires a ridiculous amount of investment on behalf of the player. It divulges nothing of the high level techniques required to finish the harder routes (though the strategy guide goes some way to address this, though i can't read my copy cus it's all in moon). There's no prescribed way to play it (making it the ultimate sandbox game!). It doesn't bill itself as an 'experience', it just is a perfectly executed set of tools for pinging a girl from A to B (or D if you've practiced hard enough) in the fastest time possible. It's the only game I've ever played that has encapsulated the joy and satisfaction of learning a musical instrument. Other games simply feel like you're pushing buttons to make stuff happen. Blam blam blam. There is a disconnect between the player and the game. Umihara Kawase forces you to learn how to move in such a fluid manner until it really does feel like you have total synergy with the game. It's the antithesis of something like Bayonetta, where you're placed in charge of a seemingly omnipotent character. You just mash buttons to blow stuff up. In Umihara Kawase, you have to earn that feeling of omnipotance, and when you do, it is a feeling unrivalled by any game I've ever played.
I'd still say there's an argument to be had that if you spend 400 hours with any game, your mastery of it is going to push the enjoyment factor up, but your post certainly manages to clarify what it is about the core physics that become so enjoyable. Also, that it's probably the most unlikely game ever to be ported to PSX and NDS must count for something too.
I'm not sure if I'll ever agree on the graphics and music being anything except sub-par, that sounds as though you may be seeing/hearing what you want to there. I don't mind the sprite work, and appreciate the foreground objects require simplicity, but the backgrounds are terribad to the point where not even imagination can do much for them, and the soundtrack only has three or four average tracks iirc.
It sounds as though I'll need to attack Umihara with renewed vigour, however, if the skill-based reward ends up being that much of a buzz. Thanks for that detailed review Mike.
and I had one since I was 11. I can mention a lot of snes games but my english sucks xd. Until now I can remember lots of SNES games Osts.
