Canadian developer KO_OP has been away from Sony’s ecosystem for fairly some time. Its first recreation, GNOG, launched on PS4 again in 2017 and is a enjoyable, vibrant puzzler that works nice in PSVR. Quick ahead a lot of years, and so they’ve returned to PlayStation with Goodbye Volcano Excessive, a visible novel concerning the hardships of discovering oneself with an impending world disaster serving as a backdrop.
Goodbye Volcano Excessive is a decidedly weird however distinctive amalgamation of concepts, being equal elements College of Rock, Don’t Look Up, and the Jim Henson present Dinosaurs. If such an odd mashup doesn’t hook you, then the writing most actually will. In a world the place everyone seems to be an anthropomorphised dinosaur, you play as Fang, a pupil with a goth aesthetic and a penchant for making music. The sport opens with you beginning your senior 12 months at Volcano Excessive College, attending to grips with what you’re going to do along with your future. You’ll even be making an attempt to win a Battle of the Bands competitors alongside bandmates Trish and Reed. Early on within the recreation, you begin noticing everybody’s cell telephones are experiencing inconsistent bouts of inexplicable electromagnetic interference. For the sake of spoilers, we gained’t say what the trigger is, however the ramifications of it’ll cling over everything of the six hours you’ll spend with this motley crew of characters.
It’s virtually a disgrace that the title is not longer, because the character writing is the brightest spot amid a myriad of high quality parts. Whereas the first narrative is not any slouch, the character writing is impeccable. Each single core character on this recreation is nice. Whether or not it’s Fang, her bandmates, her youthful brother, or these on the perimeter of her core buddy group, everybody will get a second within the highlight. Every character has a vibrant, distinctive look and distinctive and marvellously outlined personalities that permit all of them to face aside from each other with out crowding the story. It’s uncommon {that a} recreation delivers this many memorable characters this successfully, particularly over such a brief time frame.
And that’s to say nothing of the subtlety and nuance of the minute-to-minute writing, able to deftly conveying quite a few difficult concepts and feelings with skilled ranges of readability and engagement. The ultimate act of the sport particularly is jam-packed with unimaginable writing, delivering emotional wallops one after one other so rapidly you’ll hardly be capable of catch your breath. The ultimate hours of the sport particularly are actually particular, deftly balancing a touching melancholy with sudden scrumptious bursts of ecstasy. As the sport is basically a visible novel, it makes some sense that the writing is executed to such a excessive stage, however even with these expectations in thoughts, we have been blown away.
Much less spectacular is the rhythm gameplay. Outdoors of dialogue decisions, the rhythm parts are the one different actual gameplay you’ll run into, and it leaves a lot to be desired. The timing on them feels just a little off — although there’s a consolation setting to calm down this considerably — however extra importantly, they don’t have the clear UI you’d count on from a high quality rhythm title. As a substitute, it’s a must to train vigilance, as alongside a daily word chart that requires you to maneuver the thumbstick to the suitable spot, you’ve what quantity to QTEs to take care of as properly.
The true kicker is that they don’t occur in choose areas on the display screen, displaying up in what appears like utterly random spots, generally even requiring you to dart forwards and backwards throughout the display screen. It is maddening and under no circumstances conducive to getting right into a rhythm with any of the music being performed.
Fortunately these gameplay segments aren’t tremendous frequent and don’t hinder the expertise a lot. This hiccup stings even much less when accounting for the actual fact the music is phenomenal. Whereas the common rating is nice, the entire authentic music for Fang’s band, Worm Drama, is even higher, including one more vivid spot to such a shining expertise. The voice work is nice past the music too, with each efficiency offering its personal distinctive attraction, additional serving to the already-memorable characters stand out that a lot additional. This goes hand in hand with the really wonderful atmosphere design, which makes nice use of color and element to enliven a recreation that might be flat and boring in different arms.
Past this, there’s just one different pretty necessary factor to speak about, however in the event you’re studying this evaluation farther out from launch, you hopefully gained’t have to fret. This recreation has the least purposeful Trophy listing we have ever seen. Of the 38 Trophies within the recreation — a lot of them unmissable and progress-related — our full playthrough of the sport noticed us unlock one single solitary Trophy. That is one thing that must be a fairly straightforward repair in apply, however why was it in such a state to start with? One or two bugged Trophies is one factor, however your complete listing? In case you’re a Trophy hunter, you’ll positively wish to wait a bit earlier than digging into this one.
Conclusion
Goodbye Volcano Excessive is an absolute delight. Whereas the rhythm gameplay segments are a little bit of a nuisance by the use of their design, the one different actual challenge is the sorry state of the Trophy listing, one thing that must be simply remedied. In case you can look previous these pretty minor hitches, then what you’ll expertise is an exceptionally written recreation crammed out by a forged of characters with out a lot as a weak hyperlink. Mix the extremely spectacular roster of characters with the excessive caliber of writing able to delivering an emotional gut-punch simply as simply as raucous laughter, this isn’t one price sleeping on.
