LinuxGameCast Reviews – Hollow Knight

Your intrepid heroes squish bugs, juggle charms, and get good. Hollow Knight faces the CHAIRQUISITION!

Game: Hollow Knight
Webzone: http://hollowknight.com/
Devel: Team Cherry
Engine: Unity
Price: 14.99 / CDN 16.99

Wazzat: Forge your own path in Hollow Knight! An epic action adventure through a vast ruined kingdom of insects and heroes. Explore twisting caverns, battle tainted creatures and befriend bizarre bugs, all in a classic, hand-drawn 2D style.

Disclosure: They sent us keys

CHAIRQUISITION:
– Nooope

– Not sure if want

– Check it out

– Shutupandtakemymonies

Colour key: Venn Jordan Pedro

Makes with the working

V-

Noms all the RAM.
Fueling my conspiracy theory that this is a stealth 2.5D game.
You can run it at 2160 but it still displays (in-game) as 1080.

J-

Minor gripe, no steamworks save integration

P-

I made the camera freak out for a second during the Master of Souls boss fight, because at one point it breaks the glass floor and the camera is set to immediately go down.
But since I managed to get to the ledge on right side, my character didn’t drop and the camera was like “Oh, shit! You didn’t drop.”
Still, while in many games *cough*Tomb Raider*cough* that would’ve probably required a restart, in Hollow Knight it sorted itself.
Also, this is a Unity game which not only didn’t fuck itself trying to span across both my screens, it allows you to enable and disable VSync at will… if for some reason you want to play at 300 FerPS.

Shiny / Sounds

V-

Ari Gibson, you know how to art, son.
You know you’re in for something just from the “start” sound in the main menu.
And that’s just the tip of the pretty.

J-

Ah, the classic highly designed foreground and background with the minimalist character designs
It works pretty well, and all the little bug people have their charms
I’m not at all sure if there was much in the way of sounds. I didn’t really hear too much of it aside from the jibberish dialogue and the thwacky noises
Still, the art resonates with the theme and tone

P-

If A Bug’s Life had been directed by Tim Burton and produced by Studio Ghibli, not only would it have been a much more interesting movie, as it would’ve probably looked a lot like this.
In all my rants about how aesthetics are supposed to only serve the mechanics and cut the crap, I often just assume developers can either do one or the other.
We’ve seen it time and time again, games which sacrifice functionality for the sake of visuals. Aragami with its takedown animations and Pavilion.
In Hollow Knight you can have your aesthetic cake and eat it too.
The visuals do a phenomenal job of creating an atmosphere of desolation and loneliness.
Even those few other NPCs you run into look and sound unreliable.
Like they have their own motivations for being in this place and just because you’re there and you have a camera following you, they’re not just set pieces for you to gawk at and expect them to come to your rescue.
And, while the “voice acting” if it can be called that is very limited to simple gibberish which serves only to convey the tone which the NPC is giving you, it doesn’t outstay its welcome.
And if all the characters had been fully voiced, there would have probably been one which would ruin it.
Even the background audio, subtle as it is, just nails the atmosphere coffin shut around you.

Total-

Control

V-

Normally I would have just used the analog stick but I could tell in the first 10min of gameplay that would get me killed to death.
Most games are so floaty you can get away with using the analog stick and over the years this caused my D, pad to become unresponsive.
Hollow Knight is so precise I ended up taking apart the Xclone and cleaning the D, pad.
After doing that I was rewarded with arguably the most precise controls ever to grace the Linux.
And you’re going to need them, son, because some of the special items are hidden behind spike traps that make custom Mario Maker levels look like amateur hour.
Go back and watch my livestream if you need to check with the judge.
You will hear me say “I FKD that up” not “I would have got that if XYZ were better”

J-

The sensitivity of the controls can definitely take some getting used to, but once you get the hang of it, smooth-ish sailing
You’ll still fuck it up
Minor complaint, but if Asura can have correct button prompts on the DS4, why can’t this one?

P-

Okay, someone else who realised the default Unity input settings are floaty as fuck for platformers and went out of their way to make sure they worked properly.
And I do mean properly.
If you fuck up a jump or you fail to do the downwards slash and fall right into an acid pool, you can’t blame shitty controls on this one.
When you hit a button your character responds accordingly and with no noticeable latency.
When you tell the “little ghost” to move just a teeny tiny bit closer to the edge, it will.
And if you fuck up and pushed too long, you’re gonna die or at least take some damage.
Because if you’re about to shoot yourself in the foot, Hollow Knight doesn’t just stand there it watch, it’s gonna help you aim towards each individual toe.

Total-

FUN

V-

Pacing, this game nails it.
So far every single time I start to get board something pops up that regains my interest.
- Hell it even changes up levels later in the game but no more on that because spoilers.
Don’t even mind charm juggling.
- What are charms?
- Special abilities that can make or break ya (think augments)
- Learning to stack these little critters is a minigame in itself.
FSM damn do you get some pure, not from concentrate satisfaction when beating a boss.
One hit one heart.
The smallest beddies can still FK you right up.
That’s something they got hella right.
- No matter how YOLO SWAG you get charging through an area without paying attention will get you noped.
Is there backtracking? Yes, but it’s Skyrim scale backtracking.
- It’s not a mechanic to artificially inflate playtime (seriously, this game is massive) it’s done so you get your exploring on.
And get this shite, 30 HOURS in, the game threw me a OH HELLS NAW WTF BBQ twist.
I sold two copies of this game simply by saying I kinda liked it.

J-

It also makes me super paranoid, although I know that even if I die, the map will still be updated
The game also does the dark souls thing, where it encourages you to try again after dying by sticking all your coins near where you died
I’m not 100% sure how I feel about the charm system. You juggle them to customize your little dude’s behaviour, but needing to find a save point to swap them out seems a little tedious
So far I’ve got the kamehameha and the dash. Abilities seem tied to various milestones you reach in the game, unlike metroid where you can just sort of run into them, which definitely dangles the carrot in front of you
The challenge is real, and the tough but fair controls really re-enforces that. Nailing a move or getting through an area you were struggling with does give you that precious dopamine rush
All in all, I like the game. I definitely need to sink some more time into it.

P-

I could spend hours just wrapping my lips around the proverbial dick of Hollow Knight.
It’s a good, interesting, compelling, well paced, atmospheric, and positively brilliant game.
But since I’m basically the reason why we can’t have nice things, I wouldn’t be a proper games critic without something to criticise.
Which wasn’t easy. I like to think of myself as an asshole which can ruin a perfectly good thing, but Hollow Knight looked at me and said “have at, bitch!”
Many times I got dealt bullshit damage from something I couldn’t see because the camera was being slow or a building in the foreground didn’t fade out in time.
Also, there is a fine line to be walked between organically promoting exploration in a Metroidvania game and leaving players frustrated with their inability to progress.
There is such a thing as too much negative space, albeit temporary negative space, when it comes to level design.
At around the 2 hour mark, I didn’t have the dash, I didn’t have the mantis claw, I didn’t have the ground pummel ability, I didn’t have the Super Dash and I sure as hell had no idea what to do with those dark barriers.
I got a little bit disheartened at that point.
Then I realised, this isn’t Dark Souls, this isn’t a game designed solely around your skill (There’s plenty of that, don’t you worry).
Here, you need items, you need certain skills, you need maps, you need to every now and again just go back to town and talk to all the NPCs.
The moment that mindset kicked in, I was back in full Castlevania: Symphony of the Night mode and the game itself seemed to say “Someone finally gets it!” and everything started to make sense and the few bits of frustration just turned into, “Fuck it, I’ll come back later.” moments
And once the game had beat me into submission, I realised this is probably Linux Game of the Year 2017 unless something else really good comes along.