Hob (2017)

Maybe it's because I'd just rewatched Castle in the Sky the night before I started playing this, but I get big Castle in the Sky vibes from Hob. What with the resurrecting the technology of an ancient civilization and the robots with big long arms that have an affinity with nature. And the general aesthetic of the constructed environments definitely feels similar to Laputa. Which is all to say game's got a great vibe, plus the way the environments rise up out of the mist and rearrange themselves is legitimately cool.

The combat's simple but fun, with a surprisingly responsive dodge and a dash that get's really useful in the endgame. And since enemies can hurt each other you can have a lot of fun with positioning, especially when you've got one big guy and a bunch of little guys.

The puzzles are generally fairly straightforward but not tedious (usually), with the most confusion often coming from just figuring out where to go next, usually solved by just exploring for a bit (and a lot of the time when I found myself frustrated I eventually realized the solution/path forward had been staring me in the face.)

The story is super minimalist, with no dialogue, narration, or in-game text, but it does all lead up to an interesting choice at the end. And, shockingly, even though you don't have manual saves, if you want to see both endings you can just hit continue after you get back to the main menu and it'll drop you in right before the final choice.

Which it will also do when, in the middle of the penultimate cutscene leading up that choice, the game crashes and you have to restart. And so we end the positive part of the review and transition into how this game is so incredibly fucking broken.

Switches that just stop working until I reload the game (twice, because the first time it just hung on the first loading screen), getting stuck on parts of the environment that I shouldn't have even been able to get to, cutscenes triggering that had already triggered and shouldn't be triggering again and then they freeze the game—it's so broken that I'm pretty sure I accidentally sequence broke it without knowing it, leading to the last few objectives (one of which was actually an objective that I think I was supposed to have already done) not being marked on my map so I just had to kind of wander around the areas I'd already been in and hope I ran into something. At one point I found myself walking off a ledge into thin air and not falling, for like a long time, to the point I thought there was a legit invisible path there that I was supposed to follow to some hidden bonus area or something. It turned out that was right on the border of what would later be one of the raised environments and the collision hadn't been quite precisely defined.

The platforming is also terrible. Incredibly unforgiving edge detection causing you to constantly miss jumps any other game would let you get away with, way too floaty direction control so you frequently don't land where you're supposed to, and when I tried to compensate for that by using the dash so that I'd at least go in a straight line I found out that sometimes the dash just goes straight down—and then you still die from the fall because there's no fall damage, it's all or nothing. And it doesn't help that the camera is fixed, often at a disadvantageous angle, and will change angle sharply without warning as you move along. I mean, apart from the Castle in the Sky of it all this is obviously Zelda-inspired, and apparently they're big fans of N64-era Zelda.

So for all that it is generally fun to play, it can also be incredibly frustrating. And to be clear, I ran into glitches that I couldn't find anyone else talking about online, so it's not just broken, it's unstable. You might have completely different problems than I did, and maybe they'll be even more frustrating, or maybe less. But when you've got momentum the pace of progression and the constant discovery of new areas (which, again, are revealed very dramatically) makes the game pretty hard to put down. Unless it crashes and you can't get it to work again.

p.s. It's not lost on me that the Dresden Codak storyline "Hob" also involves a big robot with long arms and an affinity for nature. I don't care to speculate at this time whether that's a coincidence or not.

p.p.s. Obviously this wasn't a problem for an experienced gamer such as myself, but it is notable that the game doesn't teach you how to jump until after the first platforming challenge (which requires you to jump).

This review is more longer than others, so the summary is right below.The the full review is below the quotations.

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To put it short, Hob's greatest strength is captured in this clip:

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For the first couple of hours, it was great to unlock more of the map and watch how everything connected. Hob's structures are large and mechanical, which helped me appreciate the ancient technology hidden deep below asethetic, but in my opinion, the quality of this aspect of the game sort of took away substance from the other aspects. Although the combat abilites are varied, the lack of unique bosses (not including the minibosses spread around as those use repetitve attacks and movement patterns) removes any reason to use them at all other than taking down small and medium sized enemies. It could be that I have not made it far enough in the game to even come across many bosses, yet personally there is no incentive to. Hob's wordless approach to storytelling creates a vague perception of events, which helped keep me engaged for the most part, except when it was all wordless. When first opening Hob, I thought its wordless storytelling was a prompt to explore hidden areas, where more of the story was behind hidden areas. It was. However, these were introduced far too late in the game, by the time I found the areas,I raised forest, and my interest in continuing was decreasing. Hob's map doesn't exactly help with this either. From what I've heard, Hob is a metroidvania, so I was open to the big map (this is the first one I actually played) but running around the map going to every icon wasn't exactly helping with renewing the interest I had playing this either. At some point I gave up, and decided to write this review. Maybe I'm comparing this game to the wrong genre, but I feel like the wordless storytelling didn't make up for itself in a way, as I looked for every nook and cranny to try and find at least some around. To be fair, the worldbuilding has to be one of the best I've ever seen in a game, as the environments around you are obscured and hidden from sight, which are unlocked over time and do help you wonder what really did happen here. It could be the case that this game does have amazing storytelling and I just missed out. It could also be the case that the combat is good and the enemies were pushovers because I was playing on normal difficulty. But either way, I probably wont find out because even though Hob's world is wide, it came across to me as shallow.

Credits to TheMaroonWalrus for the Legend Of Zelda: Breath of The Wild Sheikah Tower Activaction video.

Hob's focus on exploration above everything else is a double-edged sword. On one hand, figuring out how to get to new area on the map is an exciting challenge. Each task gets you one step closer to the goal, and that feeling of progression from A->B->C->D flows smoothly across the game's diverse environments. The environments bring about a certain liveliness to the world of Hob. It feels lived-in and busy with other creatures and machines going about their own lives.

The flip side is that the remaining aspects of the game - story, combat, etc - feel a little underwhelming. The story is minimal and vague, and the game gives you very little information to put it all together. I could understand bits and pieces of the story, but I only understood the full picture after a visit to Wikipedia. On combat, enemies are varied enough to apply simple strategies, but it doesn't really go beyond that. Collectibles are a mixed bag. I'm generally a fan of games giving you useful rewards for collecting things, but Hob makes collectibles a bit too hard to find. Other folks have also pointed out technical problems at the time of release, but I did not experience any such problems.

As a whole, would I recommend Hob to another player? Yes, I would. There's a feeling of wonder and awe to Hob's world that reminds me of games like Shadow of the Colossus.

A decent game brought down by lots of little issues...

I was looking for a lighter, shorter game and thought Hob would hit the spot based on reviews. Ran into lots of little problems that cut away at an otherwise fun experience until I eventually just gave up.

From a technical perspective, the frame rate is just awful. I lowered the graphics to their “Very Low” setting and was still experiencing problems with some areas being sluggish. At higher settings most areas were like playing through molasses.

The platforming is bad. Too often I would die from bad play control, or bad camera angles, or just not knowing if that was a ledge I could reach or not. The majority of deaths didn’t seem fair; the game felt like it was hampering my jumps or movement.

Combat is bland. There isn’t a ton of it but with enough dying on the platforms enemies would respawn. It would just feel like button mashing until they were dead. There are a few upgrades but only available if you travel back to specific location, which meant a lot of backtracking to get to.

What a shame, the world is neat, has a nice presentation, and the stakes are not high. Your character is exploring a mysterious world and at times it was a pleasant little adventure.

Hob is a captivating, wordless exploration adventure with straightforward combat in a vibrant and mysterious sci-fi/fantasy world. Its gameplay loop reminded me of Zelda; its movement of Team Ico games; its vibe of Journey. Yet Hob's exact mixture felt unique and satisfying to me.

It isn't as polished as any of those sources of inspiration. The UI feels unresolved, the framerate is inconsistent (even on a relatively powerful PC), and its pace is a tad uneven due to some methodical sections. But I personally felt these shortcomings were overemphasized by critics.

The very first games i played were platformers. Dangerous Dave, Prince of Persia, Super Mario, Double Dragon - later followed by Sonic, Shinobi, The Lion King and more recent ones like Trine 1/2, Deadlight, Mark Of The Ninja plus over a hundred (!) other games marked as platformer on here.

I got stuck in this game after about 10 minutes and i had to look at a gameplay video to find out where to go.

There is a map button. It doesn't work. The game stops giving you any indication of direction after you find the forge. The world is filled with objects that look like you can interact with them, but you can't. And when you can they're inconsistent. I found a plant at the start that prompted interaction. It didn't work until i got my sword. I also found a big fist button that basically had to be a button but didn't show a prompt. As it turns out, it is a button. This kind of inconsistency is really confusing.

It doesn't help that every area looks the same. As it turned out there is a ledge near a chasm where you can sit and you have to jump across the green areas on the wall. I probably would have found it if it wasn't for the camera zooming out and making me think it was just an area where you can sit.

Another example of how Hob doesn't understand how games communicate:

At the start a big monster helps you around, at several points breaking through walls and the like. When you get your robot arm you punch through a wall together. A little while later you see another big monster bashing against a wall. Logically i assumed i had to help him. But it turns out to be an enemy, which isn't communicated in any way.

On top of that, the camera is awful, objects you are behind often don't become transparant and the game seriously lagged after 15 minutes (i really hate the artstyle too). What an utter failure.

So, I'm a sucker for platformers, and since I've played a lot of them, I think my critiques of them will naturally be harsher than with other games.

There is no doubt this is a beautiful game. The art style is very appealing, the character and scenery designs look very clean and colorful and just make you feel happy. The fact that the map is open rather than being in separate stages means you can sort of look out in the distance and see the different levels of the scenery, and I really like that. I also like how the landscape transforms as you progress through the game. Sure I've seen the whole "heal the land" trope and the whimsical little steampunk android character before, but most games have their tropes and cliches, that's not a problem to me.

However, the beautiful aesthetic was the most memorable part of the game for me. The gameplay was meh. I enjoyed playing more because it was sort of relaxing than challenging - the puzzles felt more like tasks and there wasn't quite enough variety. I was excited when I gained the first few new skills, but pretty early on you have all the skills already and none of them are used in a really innovative way as far as I can remember. If you see a punch button, or a crumbly wall, you punch. If you see a glowy blue thing, you use your slingshot thing. Not much to think hard about.

The combat was also meh. I liked the aesthetic design of the enemies, but generally, they were nothing new (the basic enemy, the bigger version of the basic enemy, the enemy with projectiles, the enemy with a big weapon that gives you the opportunity to attack when the weapon gets stuck in the ground, you know the one). There were no challenging battles with one exception (I'll get to that in the spoiler part). Also you can upgrade your sword but you really don't need to, it's easy enough to get through the game with the first sword you get and I only upgraded it once toward the very end.

The main challenge of the game is exploration, finding where you have to go and how to get there. In some ways it was fun but even with the map it was really easy to get lost and wander in circles. At least there were nice things to look at along the way, but I'm never a fan of a game where a majority of time is spent walking (with the exception of games that are specifically meant to be interactive narratives/walking simulators, which this isn't). However, being able to sprint all the time did make it sort of bearable.

Onto the spoiler section, about the end. Definitely read this if you played the game and thought the ending was extremely anticlimactic.

The first time I got to the ending, I didn't realize there were two different options. I was just holding the control stick forward waiting for the scene to end so I could walk and ended up getting the ending where you take the queen's hand. After that, I was like, that's it? But then when I reloaded the game after the credits and walked back into the throne room area, I realized that you can attack the queen instead, which was hard to tell considering her whole explanation of what's even going on is made up of vague pantomiming and an indecipherable alien language. They do give you a hint when your character draws his sword after being healed but it was still confusing to me.

That's when the only remotely challenging battle in the game happens, and I did kind of enjoy it. It was really the only part of the game where I did feel challenged. Still, I was able to finish it in a few tries with just a level 2 sword.

My biggest disappointment was that after getting both endings, if you start the game again it starts you out before that all happened. This is probably just personal preference, but I strongly would have preferred being able to play afterward with the healed world and the freed hobs(?) walking around so I could gather the leftover collectibles with a sense of full completion. Maybe it doesn't make a difference to most people, but for me I get immersed in the world and it doesn't feel the same prancing around the world searching for the last few orbs and butterflies when technically nothing has changed at that stage in the story (the android species is still imprisoned).

Overall I liked this game, I didn't love it. If I had the option for half stars, I would probably give it a 3.5 (it feels wrong that I gave this and Postal the same rating but at least Postal was challenging, plus I have to scale based on the years they were made).

And, this game is currently free on Epic Games through April 8. I had to give my honest critique but I can't complain considering I got the game for free, and it is worth picking up if you're looking for something pretty and relaxing to play through. Not sure I'd pay $20 for it at regular price, but it isn't a waste of time either if you enjoy a breezy platformer.

Beautiful and stylish puzzle action platformer with a little vibe from Ico, Journey and a hint of old Zelda.

Can be finished in under 10 hours and unlocking everything takes a bit more.

No tutorial, no subtiteles and focus on collecting everything not nailed down.

Release bugs are now mostly patched and with the latest Nvidia drivers for the 10 series card have fixed the stutters.

Hob is a top-down exploration game that has great art direction and a vague, but understandable story. The game, however, quickly becomes repetitive in its design, with the player constantly executing the same actions in different, albeit striking backgrounds.

The world of Hob is one in which technology and nature are, at the same time, entwined and in conflict. The first area is a lush forest, full of plants, trees and animals, but also ancient technological ruins moved by strange, glowing forms of energy. The wildlife can be peaceful, but also hostile, with goblin-like creatures just around the corner waiting for an opportunity to strike you down. And the whole world acts like an enormous jigsaw puzzle: the lands shift and move to fit together, allowing you to progress.

You look at this world in a top-down perspective, which reinforces its design based on verticality. There are tons of tall structures and holes that go deep underground. The lands rise and fall. You climb huge structures, make long jumps and descend through tunnels, stairs and decayed buildings.

The protagonist’s purpose is made clear right from the start. There is corruption spreading throughout the world, with a purple blob-thing with claws contaminating the environment, killing whoever comes near. It’s your mission to rid the world of this menace and save your people.

Hob’s story reflects the state of the world. The protagonist is a mechanical being, being helped by other mechanical beings. You can clearly see that it’s your people that are mechanizing the world, allowing chunks of it to move, rise and fall. There is a connection between machine and nature, but also conflict, as nature, with its purple toxic substance, is fighting back.

The game’s story is a simple one, which greatly helps its understanding, since it’s told mostly by gestures and undecipherable dialogue, spoken in gibberish. Its lore, which expands on how the world ended up in that state, is told by vague shining panels you can find in temples hidden around the world.

During the climax, you have an important choice to make, although one of the outcomes is of little consequence. The revelation that precedes this moment, however, shows how far one can go to destroy the other, corrupting even your own nature in the process if needed.

Although simple, Hob’s narrative still has some problems. The opening moments, for example, establish a strong connection between your character and a robot that makes a personal sacrifice to help you – a bond that soon begins to fade as the robot, after that, just walks around the world, pointing loosely at the faraway places you must go: if at the beginning, he’s a friend, now he’s just a pretty useless guide. Besides that, there is the fact that vague stories can clearly work – see Abzû and Journey – but Hob is vague in excess. As already said, the player can find some temple-like structures around the world, where the protagonist sits down to observe some glyphs shining. But what do they mean? There is a certain solemnity to the occasion, but the format is too abstract. Vague messages can make the player become more invested – trying to uncover their meaning – but for that to happen the messages must first at least look like messages. In Hob, the shining panels, at first, can just look like they’re activating something, just like the other glowing things in the world.

Which leads us to Hob’s most serious problem: there is no immediate logical connection between the player’s actions and their result in the world. By moving a lever you can make a whole continent rise from the abyss or just move some platforms around – and you usually can’t tell beforehand which of the two outcomes will happen. It’s not the case where the puzzle is “If I do this, that will happen”, being actually more like “If I touch glowing things, stuff will happen”. For a game that is all about its world, this disconnection to it is a grave issue. And there is the problem of repetition. Your actions are the usual Zelda actions: pushing blocks and moving levers. The results of those actions may be different most of the times, but what you do remains always the same: pushing blocks and moving levers. In Hob, you just proceed until you find a glowing thing and activate it.

The game is a metroidvania at heart, with tons of backtracking and wandering off exploring the world. You may find some upgrades that open new areas, like a grapple or a dash ability, but the most impactful moments in the game happen when you gain access to new areas not because you got stronger, but because you helped cure the world from its purple disease – like when you open gates to flood some regions. The collectables, however, are a bit problematic. Most are orbs that can be used to buy skills and new armor, and so they make for an indirect and thus unsatisfying upgrade. The others – skills, heart pieces, energy and armor – are all related to combat, improving your survival chances. However, the combat is not the game’s focus and for a good reason: it’s slow, easy and repetitive. You can easily kill every monster in the game by just spamming the attack button until they attack and you press the button to defend it. If they are armored, you remove the armor first with the appropriate ability. Therefore, making your character increasingly stronger doesn’t mean much. It would have been better if these skills were related to traversing the environment, instead of related to the overly-simple combat system.

Hob, then, is a beautiful, but flawed game, that presents a fascinating world, but fails to capitalize on it as much as it should.

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The only way I could describe Hob is that it was like reading a great sci-fi fiction novel. I was constantly intrigued and I was never bored by the way the game worked or the story. I constantly wanted to see where it went. I loved that there were no words, and every emotion was conveyed using gestures, small noises, or the small impacts you made on the landscape. Keep reading to see why I didn't give it 5 stars.

My favorite things:

• The way the landscape shifted. I loved the way that the world was constantly altered and you altered it as well with the various upgrades you receive along your journey. I felt like I could constantly go back to the same place and I'd be able to find something new each time. It kept the small map interesting.
• The overall aesthetic of the game. I love this kind of cyber-ruin aesthetic. It's similar to why I liked Breath of the Wild. Ancient, but advanced, technology has always fascinated me.
• The flexibility of the game. You essentially could start and end wherever you wanted in the game. You have a beginning point, but then you explore until you get to the final point. You have a goal, but the game doesn't tell you how to get to it. The environment tells you where you can and can't go, and where you will have to go back to later. It's daunting at first for sure, but the more you explore, the less daunting it becomes.

So why didn't I give it 5 stars?

• The Controls. For some reason playing this game in handheld mode on the Switch is A NIGHTMARE. It doesn't recognize when you're trying to run vs. walk in the game and trying to do anything directional was infuriating. I then tried it in the docked mode and the controls worked like a charm. I'm not sure if it's maybe the orientation in which you play the game makes a difference in the controls, but play this on docked mode for the best game play experience.
• Lag. I was surprised by the lag. It was only for really big scenes, but it was a little disappointing in that sense. The big end scene lagged like CRAZY and kind of ruined the moment. I was surprised that the switch couldn't handle it.

A really great game with a lot of charm and good game play.

It's hard to actually categorize the game and I think it failed mostly as it has been kind of marketed as 3D platformer. While technically it's not incorrect it doesn't actually describe the game as it should.

It's a bit of everything but at it's core I'd say it's a zelda game. Fixed camera view with heavy focus on exploration, puzzle solving, platforming and fighting in a beautiful Bastion like world with great ambiance.

There's a lot of charm to the game. And visually it's very pretty. The models and characters are interesting, the environments well crafted and pretty. Animations very fluid and although there's no conversations the gestures convey a lot and add to the game play.

The game is set in a very interesting world that's attacked by some sort of infection and it will be your job to clear it out. On your way you get to visit different places while getting more abilities that let you access areas previously inaccessible in a metroidvania style.

There's quite a few puzzles to solve along the way but they're generally not overly complicated and fun to do. Enemies are interesting and require different approach and are generally fun to fight.

I think I'm failing at describing just how magical this game felt. It's a journey - one that rewards exploration. And I had fun with it every step of the way. If you enjoy zelda games - you'll be sure to enjoy this one and I highly recommend picking it up.