Schacht Review - Many different courses

nehashetty (58)in #gaming • 7 years ago (edited)

If you look up 'shaft' in the Dikke van Dale, you will see that the word has different meanings. For example, it is described as a tubular excavation that gives access to a mine, as well as the beginning of the enveloping part of a boot. Recently something else can be said when it comes to the word shaft, namely the title of a game for the PlayStation 4. That is of course very nice, but unfortunately the game itself can not be said the same.

Run and jump

The intention of Schacht is very simple: you get multiple courses that are placed in space with different obstacles for you and you have to get to the finish as soon as possible. To help you, you have access to a number of possibilities; including jumping, wall-running and firing an EMP to switch off electrically charged surfaces. Of course you can always try to improve your own time, but there is also an online leaderboard available, so you can compare your times with other gamers from all over the world.

Conditions

This all sounds nice and nice on paper, but it has to meet a number of conditions if this is to work in a game. First, the control must be super tight. You have to be able to control your character very precisely, so that you do not have to worry about responding to your commands in time. Secondly, the courses must be diverse and above all fun. You will of course quickly be fed up if you repeatedly get the same kind of obstacles in front of you and especially if they are boring. You must also be challenged not only to improve your own time, but also that of others. Finally, the number of loops must be high, again to counteract monotony.

In general, these conditions are not or not sufficiently pursued. For example, the game itself runs at a very smooth 60 frames per second, but that can not be noticed by the controls. This reacts quite slowly for a game that screams for quick reactions. You simply can not anticipate what is coming on the track. Wall-running also asks you to place the camera so that it has the object you want to run full on, otherwise the action simply does not happen. You not only lose the overview, but it also makes the wall-running anything but intuitive. That is of course not conducive to a game that is based on setting fast times.

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A lot

It seems in the beginning that there are a large variety of courses and modes, but appearances are deceptive. The modes just all come down to the same thing, but in a slightly different context. The courses are present in large numbers. The developer claims that the game has an almost infinite number of levels, but what it comes down to is that there are 150 segments that are randomly generated. This indeed creates many different levels, but you can see quite quickly that there are pieces in a course that you have encountered before. Real variation is therefore quite fast to find. Also, the random generation ensures that quite a lot of levels are simply not fun, because it does not all fit well in terms of actions you have to do.

So it is possible

Yet there are indeed a number of loops between them that are nicely put together. Here you end up in a nice flow, even though the control is not what it should be. You jump, run and fly like a silly through the level and then you want to do it again to improve your own time - or that of other gamers. These moments show that there is indeed potential in the game, partly because of the online leaderboards. It is therefore unfortunate that no more work has been done on the way the courses are generated and that the steering is not a lot tighter. If more attention had been paid to this, then Schacht could have been quite a nice title. Now frustration too often prevails.

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3, 2, 1... game over

What also does not really help is that some levels simply do not work. That's how I wanted to start in a level, but I already fell through the starting platform after one step. After restarting the level and turning it with the camera, I saw that this part consisted of a kind of mesh, so you should be able to walk on this, but well. I jumped to another part of the same platform that was completely solid and I stayed there. Only the next jump to another platform caused me to drop through again. That platform, however, was just solid with the result that it was literally impossible to play this level.

Conclusion

Schacht is a nice idea on paper, but it is simply not well developed. The steering reacts too slowly, wall-running does not work well and there are many loops that just do not work well and are therefore not fun. Also, some levels are literally unplayable due to a bug. Yet there are occasional moments where levels are a bit nicer and they are quite fun to play, even though the steering is not ideal. Schacht did indeed have the potential to offer gamers something nice, but that is canceled out by not working out enough of the different parts of the game.

➕ Show his potential at times
➕ Online leaderboards
➕ Many different courses...

➖ ...many of which are simply not fun
➖ Control reacts too slowly
➖ Some levels literally can not be played by bug
➖ Camera during wall-running creates extra frustration

Thanks for reading.