I Want to be Human again after playing this….
Game: I Want to be Human
Developer: Sinclair Strange
Publisher: Rising Star Games
Reviewed on: PC (Review code provided by publisher)
I want to be Human follows the story of a girl-turned Vampire who is on a murder spree with her boyfriend whom she wears on her head (Yes, she actually wears her boyfriend as a hat!) in order to return themselves into the loved up couple they once were after being corrupted by evil forces.
After being greeted by the title screen with a rocking tune I went to the options menu order to change the controls to make it more PC friendly and what I was used to in other titles. However, I was disappointed to find that no matter how much I tried to change the controls it would not register so I was stuck using the arrow keys for movement and the up arrow for jump rather than the favoured WASD for maneuvering and the Space Bar for jumping (a lot of games let me change to this layout). This did not help as I found it difficult to navigate for the most part. The shooting and turning however is more fluid as it is done using the mouse.
Using the Left Mouse button shoots while the Right Mouse allows you to dash forward. You can double jump by pressing the jump key twice and you can also attach yourself to walls and do a wall-slide or use them to your advantage to wall-jump. It tells you this during the tutorial but I hardly noticed as the words seemed to blend into platforms. While I have no complaint with the art style and overall visuals, I did feel tha more of a colour palette with the game could improve it as everything just screamed Red/Grey/Black and White throughout the game! After the tutorial you find yourself on a map screen, which is used to navigate between levels which is quite handy as if you die a few times on one level, you can move on and come back to it at a later time.
The aim is to rack up lots of points in each level; there are collectibles such as Floppy Discs, keys and P Boxes that you can shoot or hit from underneath (Think of the way Super Mario works) while Vampire girl throws out occasional obscenities such as “You Tampon” and “Wow what a complete boob” as you destroy your enemies. Women eh….
The P Boxes can restore health back on your Blood Meter or give you more points. Also, when enemies die they occasionally leave red blobs behind which also fill your health up. I found out the wall-jump can be a real life saver as there were many parts where I thought that I would fall to my doom but I managed to save myself. However, there are still some instances where it will fail to save you due to pools of liquid in some of the levels. This will destroy you as soon as you touch them and you are frequently knocked into them, which can be very annoying.
The aiming system is mostly ok but the shotgun you use has limited range so getting close to enemies is required and annoying for the most part as projectiles are usually on the receiving end. You will come across occasional death zones such as spike traps and lasers, which again will result in your quick demise! Bottomless pits can be found aplenty accompanied by many floating enemies who shoot projectiles so avoiding them is a must to not fall to your death. You can avoid falling to your death mostly however by using the blocks that you can bounce on, moving platforms and of course the wall-sliding and wall-jumping features.
When you Pause the game it plays some indescribable beat noise, which can be described as similar to the Battletoads pause music but not as good, trust me on that!. Otherwise, the in-game music is probably the best part of the game and even that is mostly drowned out in later levels from the sound of enemies machine guns constantly.
VERDICT
Unfortunately, I Want to be Human is an average platformer that didn’t do anything for me to get some enjoyment out of it, lacking anything innovative to add to the platforming genre. Most of what you can do is seen in other games and even then is implemented better. The fact that it screams for a controller to be played even after editing the controls really disappointed me. I want to be Human was very disappointing, and therefore I cannot recommend a purchase.
Reading this saves me from having to put myself through the torture of actually playing it. I was on the fence about it, but I highly doubt I could play any PC game without the WSAD/Space combo. It’s a shame because it looks to be an enjoyable game.