Pid

 
Developer: Might and Delight
Released: October 2012
Hours Played: 9.4
Similar To: Max: Curse of Brotherhood / Nyx Quest / OiO / Rochard / Trine
Rating: 3/5 Parsnips

GAMEPLAY
When you first fire up the game of Pid, you'll believe you've stumbled across a thing of beauty; something that rival the heights of a Limbo or a Trine. Indeed, for the entire first half of the adventure, the game screams out "A" standard - it really is that good. Within curious environments such as factories, workshops and basements, you travel around while avoiding an assortment of enemies and navigating your way to elusive exit points. To assist with your endeavours, you are given the ability to lay down beams which you can jump into in order to float to where you need to go. Later you are offered bombs, armour and rockets (that jet propel you) which you can buy from vending machines with stars that you collect along the way. Pid also has its fair share of well-designed puzzles and contraptions.


BALANCE & PACE
For the first half of the game you'll be gripped and locked into the sweet-spot where you may believe you're playing a classic. Three hours in you then get to the infamous second boss known as The Crook. This boss will throw you into a state of deep frustration even with the walkthrough from YouTube clearly imprinted on your mind. Personally after literally pulling at my hair it took me about two and a half hours to finally crack. Others will simply give up. Unfortunately, the spike in difficulty doesn't abate; it then seems as if the crook has stolen all the pleasure from the game as yet more jumping and floating with pinpoint accuracy is required with possibly more hair pulling in store. The Crook can be surmounted, it just may take a long time - and it's really up to the gamer whether getting further in the game is worth striving for.


PRESENTATION & DESIGN
Let's not be too harsh on Might and Delight. The movement of your character and the way the camera follows the action is silky smooth. Environments have a subtle, steampunk flavour with an ambient misty aura. Outside environments have a European theme and are well-rendered with pale pastel colour schemes. All the enemies, the symbols on the UI and objects in the environment are artfully done. The soundtrack is also a very big plus with some of the tunes adding a good driving vibe. There is total minimalism with the start menu as you are greeted with the bare bones. In pink italic letters of lower case and with the background entirely in black you get your menu. It's all straightforward with perhaps a little unnecessary scrolling. What's wrong with less screens of more information that you can directly click on with the mouse?
 

PROGRESS SYSTEM
Progress is tracked very badly in Pid. There are different areas and environments - and the titles of these pop up when you reach them - but there is no record kept of these at all. There is no map screen to show you where you are in relation to the whole world area, no list of areas that you have done or are to do and no level-select screen... so you can't redo areas if you wish. When you start your game, you're simply thrown into the same location from where you left off. Call me old-fashioned but I don't really like being kept so much in the dark. There is an achievements page and a Leaderboard chart that show the playtime of those who've done speed-runs through the game but that's it as far as progress and stats go.


CONCLUSION
We need to get the elephant out of the room. You need to ask yourself if difficult old-school style platform gaming is for you. If it isn't, and you take the plunge, that old-style of difficulty may rob you of the fun. Developers do need to question what sort of difficulty level is acceptable in a game and thoroughly test-drive their games. There are difficult games and then there is plain old punishing games. Do I raise the grade because the superb sound, graphics and first half of the game makes up for the "game-breaking" error or lower it because the latter exists? (Ed.) Well, I'm pleased to say there is a happy end to this story... The creators changed the difficulty after complaints on the Steam forums which means that the innovation, ingenuity and sheer class shines through - Harrah!