About This Game An artistic metroidvania with a classic NES era gameplay, taking the player through the life of an average man escaping his depression in a partly imaginary world he create 5d3b920ae0 Title: External VisionsGenre: Free to Play, IndieDeveloper:team BitClubPublisher:team BitClubRelease Date: 15 Nov, 2017 External Visions Pack visions external hard drive. external visions download. visions electronics external hard drive. external visions free download. external visions ltd. external vision statement definition. vision external cleaners. external visions birmingham. vision external cleaners. external visions free download. external vision statement. external visions download. external vision statement definition. external visions ltd. external visions steam. external cephalic version. external version pregnancy. external visions steam. external visions birmingham. external vision system. external door vision panel. external vision statement. external visions. external visions. external night vision camera. external night vision camera. visions electronics external hard drive. vision external fixator. external vision system. external door vision panel. external version pregnancy. vision external fixator. external cephalic version. visions external hard drive I didn't like this game for various reasons. Basically It's like if the game wasn't finished.Their previous game was much better ("Spaceport Hope") or "Environmental Station Alpha" is also better game, but the one i'm really looking forward to for sure is "Treasure Adventure World".PROS: custom controls + each weapon do different thingsCONS: no story (or at least i didn't understand) + map is really ugly + no funny to play + etc. Iu2019ll be honest, Iu2019ve been avoiding this one. I picked it up around its original release because Iu2019m a pretty big fan of the developeru2019s previous game, Spaceport Hope. The pitch is good, the game looks expansive, and so I had high hopes for digging deep into External Visions. But it didnu2019t take me long to start running into roadblocks to my enjoyment, more and more until I decided to put the game down for awhile. Maybe I wasnu2019t in the mood for an off-beat metroidvania, I thought. Iu2019ve tried to get back into it several times since then, and each time has only solidified what I already knewu2026 Itu2019s not me, game, itu2019s you.External Visions ostensibly takes place in the mind of a regular everyman struggling with depression. His battle has turned his mental landscape into an actual battlefield, rife with grotesque monsters and oppressive entities. If he is to have any chance of escaping his pain, youu2019ll need to guide him through the vast halls and labyrinths to do battle with the beasts that inhabit them. Youu2019ll meet some helpful folks along the way, presumably positive parts of his psyche or memories of people that have survived the darkness. Ultimately youu2019ll be questing for a whole little society in here, which only makes the stakes higher.Again, itu2019s a good pitch for a game, but the mind is forever a perilous place to place your game. Surrealism and symbolism arenu2019t as simple as putting cracks or mold on your floor tiles, after all. Every part of the gameu2019s design needs to be informed by the decision to set it in an unreal place, making sure to consider the meaning of every enemy placement, color palette, and sidequest. To put it bluntly, External Visions doesnu2019t do that. You know this is all inside your characteru2019s mind because people tell you, not because thereu2019s any clear symbolism that reveals his traumas and coping mechanisms. Thereu2019s also no significant character development OUTSIDE your characteru2019s mind, which gives less context and less reason to care about whatever happens INSIDE it.That wasnu2019t even what hung me up on the game, though. External Visions plays like a solid enough metroidvania, giving you a vast map of interconnected rooms to explore and items to find among them. However, your primary means of overcoming obstacles is not in the items you collect, but in weapons you essentially borrow. There are terminals all over the game with numbers 1, 2, and 3 on them. Each is a ranged weapon with a special purpose, like 3 which fires yellow blasts that solidify into blocks you can jump on. You must find a terminal to use that weapon, and you can only use one at a time. I know what youu2019re thinking, and yes, those terminals are not terribly numerous. So to solve many of the puzzles in the game, youu2019re going to be backtracking just to pick up the weapon youu2019re supposed to have at the moment.Itu2019s an absolutely inexplicable design decision, and one that kills the pacing of the game. Iu2019ve absolutely had moments where I had a choice between two weapons, picked one, and progressed for 5 or 10 minutes just to reach a roadblock I should have picked the other for. Itu2019s hardly the only issue with the game, either. The difficulty is all over the place, starting out even enough for the first hour or two and then spiraling out of control from the library. Controller support is limited and may require manual bindings to get it working, and some of the choices for sound effects can seriously grate after awhile. These are mostly small complaints but the add to the big ones in a way thatu2019s hard to ignore.I know a lot of heart went into making this game, which is why I hate having to describe it in these terms. But thereu2019s no getting around it, External Visions doesnu2019t come together in a satisfying way. The core themes are not as fleshed out as they need to be, and the core gameplay has serious deficiencies that make it hard to stick with. It makes it that much harder to see decent art direction and level design go into such a flawed game, but no matter how much I want to enjoy it, I canu2019t. I hope this title has been a learning experience for team BitClub, and that their next game is every bit the success I wanted this one to be.Did you enjoy this review? I certainly hope so, and I certainly hope you'll check out more of them at https://goldplatedgames.com/ or on my curation page!. This isn't really a full review, I simply lost interest due to an underwhelming first few minutes.Level and enemy design is bland. The upgrade system seems very imbalanced and poorly thought out. I am kind of tempted to replay to try to see what sort of boss battles there are later, but I can't force myself to slog through to find out if there are any good parts.. Iu2019ll be honest, Iu2019ve been avoiding this one. I picked it up around its original release because Iu2019m a pretty big fan of the developeru2019s previous game, Spaceport Hope. The pitch is good, the game looks expansive, and so I had high hopes for digging deep into External Visions. But it didnu2019t take me long to start running into roadblocks to my enjoyment, more and more until I decided to put the game down for awhile. Maybe I wasnu2019t in the mood for an off-beat metroidvania, I thought. Iu2019ve tried to get back into it several times since then, and each time has only solidified what I already knewu2026 Itu2019s not me, game, itu2019s you.External Visions ostensibly takes place in the mind of a regular everyman struggling with depression. His battle has turned his mental landscape into an actual battlefield, rife with grotesque monsters and oppressive entities. If he is to have any chance of escaping his pain, youu2019ll need to guide him through the vast halls and labyrinths to do battle with the beasts that inhabit them. Youu2019ll meet some helpful folks along the way, presumably positive parts of his psyche or memories of people that have survived the darkness. Ultimately youu2019ll be questing for a whole little society in here, which only makes the stakes higher.Again, itu2019s a good pitch for a game, but the mind is forever a perilous place to place your game. Surrealism and symbolism arenu2019t as simple as putting cracks or mold on your floor tiles, after all. Every part of the gameu2019s design needs to be informed by the decision to set it in an unreal place, making sure to consider the meaning of every enemy placement, color palette, and sidequest. To put it bluntly, External Visions doesnu2019t do that. You know this is all inside your characteru2019s mind because people tell you, not because thereu2019s any clear symbolism that reveals his traumas and coping mechanisms. Thereu2019s also no significant character development OUTSIDE your characteru2019s mind, which gives less context and less reason to care about whatever happens INSIDE it.That wasnu2019t even what hung me up on the game, though. External Visions plays like a solid enough metroidvania, giving you a vast map of interconnected rooms to explore and items to find among them. However, your primary means of overcoming obstacles is not in the items you collect, but in weapons you essentially borrow. There are terminals all over the game with numbers 1, 2, and 3 on them. Each is a ranged weapon with a special purpose, like 3 which fires yellow blasts that solidify into blocks you can jump on. You must find a terminal to use that weapon, and you can only use one at a time. I know what youu2019re thinking, and yes, those terminals are not terribly numerous. So to solve many of the puzzles in the game, youu2019re going to be backtracking just to pick up the weapon youu2019re supposed to have at the moment.Itu2019s an absolutely inexplicable design decision, and one that kills the pacing of the game. Iu2019ve absolutely had moments where I had a choice between two weapons, picked one, and progressed for 5 or 10 minutes just to reach a roadblock I should have picked the other for. Itu2019s hardly the only issue with the game, either. The difficulty is all over the place, starting out even enough for the first hour or two and then spiraling out of control from the library. Controller support is limited and may require manual bindings to get it working, and some of the choices for sound effects can seriously grate after awhile. These are mostly small complaints but the add to the big ones in a way thatu2019s hard to ignore.I know a lot of heart went into making this game, which is why I hate having to describe it in these terms. But thereu2019s no getting around it, External Visions doesnu2019t come together in a satisfying way. The core themes are not as fleshed out as they need to be, and the core gameplay has serious deficiencies that make it hard to stick with. It makes it that much harder to see decent art direction and level design go into such a flawed game, but no matter how much I want to enjoy it, I canu2019t. I hope this title has been a learning experience for team BitClub, and that their next game is every bit the success I wanted this one to be.Did you enjoy this review? I certainly hope so, and I certainly hope you'll check out more of them at https://goldplatedgames.com/ or on my curation page!. This isn't really a full review, I simply lost interest due to an underwhelming first few minutes.Level and enemy design is bland. The upgrade system seems very imbalanced and poorly thought out. I am kind of tempted to replay to try to see what sort of boss battles there are later, but I can't force myself to slog through to find out if there are any good parts.. I didn't like this game for various reasons. Basically It's like if the game wasn't finished.Their previous game was much better ("Spaceport Hope") or "Environmental Station Alpha" is also better game, but the one i'm really looking forward to for sure is "Treasure Adventure World".PROS: custom controls + each weapon do different thingsCONS: no story (or at least i didn't understand) + map is really ugly + no funny to play + etc
External Visions Pack
Updated: Mar 23, 2020
Comments