I feel like I just reviewed a Radiangames title a few weeks ago. Surely that can’t be the case though because here they are with an all new game. Luke Schneider you’re an animal. Crossfire, JoyJoy, Inferno, and now Fluid have all been tallied up in the span of just 2010. We get it guys, you’re prolific!
Gameplay
I’m going to get this out of the way right here – Fluid inhabits a genre I don’t particularly care for. There I said it, I’m not a fan of precision time trial overhead pacman-esc style games. Why? Because I’m bad at it. That said, it isn’t entirely impossible for me to divest myself of these preferences and to appreciate the production quality of a game like Fluid.
The game has a few pretty simple mechanics working together. The first is a booster tile which as you’d imagine serves to give you a brief but vital boost of speed. Secondly there are wurmholes, which will swallow you up and spit you out at another location on the map. The last special mechanic is a whirlpool it functions exactly as you’d imagine pulling all enemy’s into it for a set amount of time before rereleasing them to continue their persuit of you.
Now Fluid starts out simple enough taking its time to introduce you to all thse mechanics. You simply collect all the shinies before the time runs out and profit. Easy peasy, then stuff starts chasing you, time limits get lean, and wormholes start to become commonplace. The first thing you’ll notice as this happens is that there is mostly a preordained path that will likely yield the best time results. As if a path were the starting point of each maps development and everything else falls in around it. I found this to be both good and bad, it meant there was a right answer, but it also meant that there were few alternative answers.
My guess is this was quite a challenge in development, to create a game that mimics the behavior of its liquid namesake. Making maps that you can flow through with elegance, but also don’t let you just ride the log ride. Lets face it if you just went where you needed to go by default there wouldn’t be much of a game here.
All this talk of elegant and free flowing design aside, there are a good number of levels where this guiding influence seems entirely absent. There may be momentary instances where you feel as though you just caught a wave of momentum and are riding it to the finish line, but more often than not it seems to break early leaving you paddling up stream.
There are a lot of cool things going on here though, the wormholes have a nice snappy feel to them and add a nice sense of complexity. The boosters add a nice sense of speed, and the red blobs that start to chase you on various levels add a bit of an improved dance. Mechanically everything in Fluid is very sound. It is just the map designs that may have benefited from a little more polish.
Audio / Visual
Visually this game has a ton in common with much of the Radiangames’ library. It is done in a very similar style to Inferno as it possesses much the same top down abstract ship centered sort of feel to it. This one obviously adds in some lovely rippling effects and a other cues to remind you your supposed to feel like you are in a wet world.
All said, the game is lovely. The minimalist aesthetic is functional as well as pleasing to look at. The bright white save screens on the other hand in a poorly lit room can be harsh on the eyes – but now I think I’ve wandered into the realm of nitpicking.
Fluid’s music and sound effects match it’s visual style and share much in common with past Radiangames’ titles. As you may expect this means there isn’t a whole lot to it, it doesn’t distract from the game in the least, and isn’t depended upon in any real communicative capacity. So it really does its job to break the silence and not bug the player.
Summary
Fluid is a mechanically solid, good looking, fine sounding game that plays pretty damn well. It is easily worth its 80 Microsoft Points. I would, however suggest you demo the game if you are unsure about the genre and just see what you think. If you find yourself looking for something a little different from them, but not too different, I would highly recommend looking into some of Radiangames’ other titles.