The end of a long wait
Our first encounter with the game left a lot to be desired. Apparently the game sometimes requires a reboot of the computer after installing it to run well, but witho
ut any warning about it we simply think to attribute it to a very bad optimization. Fortunately the developers are quite active in the Steam forums and after just a few hours we received the suggestion to restart it from its developers. Point in their favor.
Solved this first obstacle we got into the Lugaru campaign, a remastering of the campaign of that first game that inspired Overgrowth. Thus, we find a small map in which to run like the rabbit protagonist (that I know is the only character that can play the player), talk to
their peers and eventually distribute cakes. All the beings of the game are bipedal versions of animals executed with enough sobriety and little personality and all conversations take place through dialogues without dubbing in predetermined videos.
This first campaign leaves a lot to be desired, which is not surprising considering that it originally went out there in 2005 . The maps are small, little interactive and the enemies little varied and badly distributed. Our work can be summarized in slapping, impaling or splitting various creatures on our way to an objective that I have already forgotten since I completed it a few days ago. In short, this first campaign is not memorable at all and you can skip it without remorse.
The Overgrowth campaign is somewhat better. Despite the fact that the game has been running for nine years, this campaign came out just a week before the game itself. Unlike Lugaru, here we can already find much wider scenarios, more diverse situations and a more varied list of enemies. Unfortunately, we will continue to dedicate ourselves mainly to combat and platforms, with an unlikely option to be stealthy this time. The story, which is something like Gladiator with rabbits, leaves much to be desired in its execution but has its moments.
Passable combat
The gameplay of Overgrowth is extremely simple, despite the tremendous amount of work that has taken to make it a reality. Our protag
onist rabbit is able to assault from stealth, beat, roll on the ground, use a wide variety of weapons and move with total agility for the environ
ment. At all times you can see that this is the work of a very small studio with many limitations and the animations, although not lacking in char
m, are frankly not very polished. The combat system is based entirely on the animations generated by the computer itself and that makes the final result lose ch
arm and quality. The combat is fast and accurate, reminiscent of that Bushido Blade of yesteryear, but it lacks the refinement and the quality
of this one. The combat system of Overgrowth has a complexity that the precision of its controls does not allow.
That does not mean there’s no where to have fun here. Although they are not perfect the procedural animations of the title managed to get m
e more than a laugh. The individual fights are fast and exciting like few other games and we must entrust the lack
of playable interface that hardly harms the title (both you and your enemies die in so few hits that it would not serve much as a health bar). Artifi
cial intelligence has some surprising and even innovative details and the first time an enemy dog takes your sword in the air you will jump out of your seats . The fifteenth on the same level, maybe not anymore.
Graphically the game has some effects well done at certain levels of the campaign and, to be a three-dimensional title created mostly by a singl
e person, the title is not entirely ugly. The textures left to be desired and in one of the levels the floor became reflective as if it were Robocop’s butt , one of many glitches and bugs that the game has. The locations and scenarios have large dimension
s but are patently empty and lacking in detail. The sound section has an acceptable soundtrack and a total absence of dubbing in any language.
Technically after that first misstep we have commented the game ran without any problem at 60 frames per second. Unfortunately that did not stop us from encountering a lot of bugs, bugs, glitches and even a handful of total crashes that left us astonishe
d. Overgrowth is not finished, despite what its nine years of development may indicate . In just three hours of the two available campaigns should not stay hung at least five times. One of them, it should be added, was nothing more than completing
the last mission of the game and before the game saved that we had done it. Fortunately the patches are coming with some speed but given the amount of technical problems Wolfire Games still has a long way to go.
