Defunct Review - Visually the game is nicely varied

braini (61)in #gaming • 7 years ago (edited)

Imagine: you are a robot and your engine is barely functioning. This means you have to build up momentum by raking hills, if you want to make a little tempo. On the way to the repair wing of your airship, a hatch opens and you fall back to earth, with a still barely functioning engine. Since your airship is the only technician on board that can repair your propulsion, it is important to come back to that ship before it leaves you behind. This is the structure of Defunct. But does that also provide a fun game concept? Read on to find out...

Not a good start...

A good start is half the work. Unfortunately Defunct does not really honor this. In the beginning, the game does not feel particularly nice: there is not much explained and the steering is uncomfortable. There are different types of objects processed in the game world, some of which affect your speed, others are only intended as collectible.

Since your speed is the most important aspect in Defunct, it would be nice to know if you pick up a certain trick by picking up a certain objectcan do it or not, without letting it come to a guess. If that does not work out well, you can in most cases wave your speed goodbye. In addition, in the very beginning it mainly feels like you are controlling Wall-E after it has combined a number of lines of speed with a lot of drinks.

There is also a contradiction between where your focus should lie. The light on the back of your robot lights up green when you go down a hill and red when you go uphill. Based on that light, you have to choose whether to gravitizebutton or not: if you do that as you go downhill, your speed will increase, but you will lose momentum if you press this button when you go up. So you would think that light is the point that you need to focus on. However, if you do, you will lose interest in the environment, which quickly leads to clashes and frustrations.

...but a good follow-up

What I did not expect, is that these problems were only problematic for half an hour. Once I had mastered the controls (that is, I left the mouse for what it was and played purely with the keyboard), it felt great to rage through the different landscapes in Defunct. Incidentally, 'different' in this case is mainly a case of skins and not so much actual variations in gameplay. Snow, desert, grassland, it does not matter: in essence, it all feels the same.

This is unfortunate, because differences in control in different landscapes could have extended the duration of Defunct. On the other hand, perhaps it had only caused frustration when the different landscape types in Defunct gave a different driving experience: the different environments followed each other at a fairly fast pace, which ultimately made the game a bit short. Slightly more puzzles and larger levels could have extended the playing time, especially if the control would differ in different landscapes.

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As far as I am concerned, Defunct therefore misses some opportunities, especially since the potential is indeed present. The puzzles are simple, because usually it is important to build up enough momentum to jump high and / or far enough to reach a certain object. Perhaps superficially, but extremely effective. The search for the optimal route to build that momentum turned out to be an activity that I personally liked very much. There are often several roads that lead to Rome, but one road has more obstacles than the other and that is the power of Defunct: if you choose a more difficult route and ultimately succeed, it feels pretty satisfying.

Conclusion

All in all Defunct offers a pretty nice experience, once you are used to the controls. The speed that you build to solve the puzzles (or just raging through the landscape) feels really nice and visually the game is nicely varied. However, it lacks a bit of content: if you want, you can reach the end in less than an hour. Especially since Defunct seems to emphasize speed runs and you feel in every aspect that you have to rush through the game as quickly as possible, it still feels a bit skimpy. In his current state, I recommend Defunct when it can be picked up at a Steam Sale for a nice price.

The plus and minus points

✔ Speed sense
✔ Puzzles
✔ Varied landscapes
✖ Short playing time
✖ Stem start
✖ Unclear collectibles

Thanks for reading, I hope you liked it!

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