Puzzle games have acquired quite a niche among gamers in recent years. The scope of their grandeur and the depth of their tasks have evolved from simplistic mini-games (think of lock picking in Elder Scrolls games or the bypass/decryption puzzles in Mass Effect) into full scale mental testing experiences. One of my favorite things about the advent of puzzle games is the sense of accomplishment that comes with each puzzle solved, and it doesn’t hurt that there is a small degree of social acceptance for puzzle games. As a child, I attempted to justify gaming to my parents by treating games like an interactive book or movie, which I’m sure was a pretty feeble argument from their perspective. Now that websites are touting “brain games” as legitimate sources of neurological acuity, I believe I have some scientific justification for my case. Let the gaming beg-…er, brain growth commence!
Story Overview In Magnetic: Cage Closed, from Swedish developers Guru Games, you assume the role of death row prisoner XE-47623, who has been selected to take part in a project at a weapons testing facility. Your experience as a lab rat begins when you are transported to the testing facility through a tunnel system. The testing site is managed by the prisons’ warden, William Keene, and by a prison psychologist, Karen Vomberg. The only tsk assigned to you by the facilitators is to survive the trials using their Magnet gun. Magnet gun, eh? If that sounds mildly familiar, think Half-Life 2’s gravity gun with Newton’s 3rd law in play.
In the game’s first of many bows to Portal, the interlude – “Piece of Cake,” allows you the ability to move about and acquaint yourself with the mechanics. Interlude is basically the training portion of the game. You are given several test chambers that progressively expand your familiarity with the mechanics of the traps, rooms, and the magnet gun. Following this training, Chapter 1 begins and the player is subjected to lethal test chambers. The story progresses with loudspeaker commentary from both the warden and the psychologist, and eventually develops into one of nine endgame possibilities, arrived at through a simple set of choices.
Gameplay Mechanics
The developer did a decent job mimicking the fundamentals of Portal with their Magnet gun; however, the controls and movement felt a bit clunky and lacked the fluidness found in other major puzzle titles.
The Gun – The magnet gun has 2 functions, attract and repel. With these functions the player can grab and throw small boxes, push and pull large boxes and shelves, and augment their jumps by repelling from or attracting toward magnetic wall strips. The gun’s only progression is in the strength of its magnetic field, which starts with 2 levels and becomes maxed out with 3 levels of power.
Basic Movement – your movements consist of: forward, back, left, right, crouch, and jump. You can then combine your movements and use of the gun with easily identified wall and ceiling/floor tiles to attract or repel yourself with varying degrees of force. Most movements were pretty intuitive… Noticed a path of spikes in my way + a patch of magnetic tiles in front of the spikes = use the repel force and jump to launch yourself over the spikes. There were, however, a few instances that seemed poorly thought out and/or challenged my thought processes.
Traps – Death was limited to 3 main causes in the chambers. fire, chlorine gas, and spikes, with rare instances of crushing and the possibility for death by gravity during a few Portal-esque portions of the story. The traps and their associated puzzles made for several periods of head scratching, but were for the most part easy enough to figure out in one or two tries.
Saves and Resets – There is an autosave function but unfortunately there are no independent save files and I didn’t notice a way to reset a specific test chamber during the main story outside of quitting and reloading the most recent save file.
The Rest
Given the indie nature of Magnetic’s development, Guru Games was able to do a lot right. The tests graduated in complexity at an appropriate pace, the graphics (similar to Bioshock) were suited to a dark and cold prison world, and most importantly they did a great job of implementing the use of the magnet gun, resulting in a highly intuitive gameplay feature. I never became frustrated with the game’s puzzles but I did feel challenged now and again.
The story, however, was cold and lacked creativity. It mirrored Portal at what seemed like every point possible; whether with a “test subject” protagonist, a dictatorial over-watch, the use of a matter manipulating gun, or even with its variance of environment (There is a point where the player ends up outside of the test chambers and away from big brother’s eyes). The developers attempted to address the aforementioned story dullness and to separate themselves from Portal’s theme via alternate endings. To their credit, the alternate endings were able to spice up the story a bit, but after playing through another round I found myself only interested in the time trials. The transitions between chambers and the inability to skip dialogue became mildly irritating and exceptionally mundane after my third or fourth bout of crawling (why so much crawling?), and the tiresome doomsday commentary from the warden forced me to the conclusion that the dialogue was an afterthought.
коккоколокольчик класс
Not bad