The Gunk (2021)

I'm a sucker for games with bioluminescent mushrooms and super colorful fauna, and this is one of the best looking games I've ever played. You run around on an alien world sucking up "gunk with your vacuum cleaner like. The gunk is also fabulously animated, like boiling tar floating around in the air. Great voice acting and a coherent story. The gameplay isn't groundbreaking, but the game is still a lot of fun.

Played on Gamepass

The Gunk gerade abgeschlossen. Hab euch die Review unten verlinkt. Als nächstes werde ich sehr wahrscheinlich mit Lego City Undercover weitermachen, da dass Spiel ganz oben ist in meinem Backlog. Hab dafür damals ca. 10 Euro ausgegeben, habs aber erst ne Stunde gespielt. Ich weiß noch nicht, ob ich es auf 100% mache, da es doch sehr groß ist. Viel Spaß mit der The Gunk Review.

Link zur Review

Pros:

• Beautiful game. Art design was on point. Music and VA excellent.
• Controls (movement, aim, shoot, scan, skip, etc) are not perfect but pretty close. Responsive and intuitive.
• Fast travel points were well spaced, and should cater to a wide range of play styles.
• Nice story
• The equipment upgrade system is good, where upgrades are useful but not required (with one exception) and the material cost is forgiving, never feeling too grindy.

Cons:

• Most of what dropped this game from a solid 4 stars to 3 is minor bugs and optimization complaints. Hopefully they are ironed out during the coming months:

• Loading times on XB1 are pretty awful, especially in the last third of the campaign. A minute of loading, 2 minutes of gameplay traveling across a small space to hear a few voice lines, then another minute of loading, rinse and repeat.
• Colors overlays often appeared on edges, or even occasionally covering the right half or the whole screen, depending on the direction the character faces or moves, clearly not in a way that was intended, and making for great difficulty navigating a couple of platforming areas.
• The final chapter, reaching the dome, was bugged on a couple of floors where a section of gunk couldn't be fully sucked up without some very creative acrobatics. Again the intended progression of tasks here was obvious, this was not a case of a misunderstood puzzle. It is bugged.

• Gosh it would have been nice to have a map. A number of times, I paused the game and when returning 15 or 20 minutes later, I can't remember which path I came in from, which path I had already visited, and which path I needed to see next. Much of the world looks the same, which would be fine, if there were another way to distinguish paths, such as a map... even as is it would have been much more tolerable if testing a path didn't require another minute of loading time each direction.
• Wish there was more puzzle to it. There were so many opportunities for puzzles and very little implementation. The necessary steps to advance through an area are usually obvious within a few seconds of entering, making the actual doing of many of the tasks feel like busy work. This is especially true of the swing bridges. I don't like having to go back and forth so many times. There is no challenge, it feels like filler.
• Some more challenge to the enemy encounters would be nice. It's an adventure exploration game first and foremost but it has some enemies and miniboss style fights so an option for increased difficulty seems appropriate.
• Collectibles would be nice. There are a few places off the beaten path which are clearly meant to be bonuses but they only reward more of the same materials that are already found in abundance throughout the campaign. Having those special spots hold collectibles instead would give more of a sense of accomplishment and make the platforming run-around feel more worthwhile.