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Has anyone bought this/tried it out? If so, what were your thoughts? If not, have some reference material:

* http://www.heart-machine.com/
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NUT5SBZkVys

I picked the game up on Steam (PC) a few days ago and got around to trying it tonight for a little under an hour (can't risk trying it for more than that else Steam won't approve a refund if I ask for one).

The graphics are great (SNES-esque, although many of the cutscene animations have a kind of Out Of This World feel to them -- hard to explain), the music is very immersive and reminiscent of Fez (because it's done by Richard Vreeland / Disasterpeace, same guy who did Fez's music :-) ), the plot seems worthy (and hits home with me as I've a debilitating condition with no reliable treatment/cure), a game style that's a strange sort of mix of, I don't know, Secret of Mana + Super Metroid + Crystalis (kinda) + I-don't-even-know-what?...

...bt then comes the play control and how it relates with level design, and that's where (IMO) the game falls apart badly. I can talk a bit about that more in depth if asked. It's not as bad as, say, Super Meat Boy or I Wanna Be The Boshy (may both those games rot in hell), but it's still disappointing. I wanted to see if there were others out there who felt that the play control was awful given the mandatory requirement use of an analog stick on a 360 controller. I strongly feel this game needs to be played with a good D-pad given its precision requirements, but such isn't supported.

I thought it was fantastic. One of the best games I've played in a while.


I don't remember feeling the controls were a problem, though I played with a gamepad. Didn't try keyboard/mouse controls.

As an aside, some gamepads let you exchange d-pad for analogue stick at the hardware level. I have this one: Logitech F310

I played HLD with normal control settings though.

I was expecting a futuristic racer and was sorely disappointed. I've never been a fan of the flat shaded art style that this game employs, but it does it well and it's 1000x better than the crappy neo retro pixel art crap.

Edit: Crappy crap. Wow.

I just wish I'd find a new game with an art style more akin to Metal Slug, but I know that's a hell of a lot to ask for.

This game looks stunning, and I'm a huge fan of its art direction (especially palette) and the Out of This World style used in its cut scenes. I also just noticed that it received a local co-op update, so I'll definitely be grabbing it.

Thanks everyone, esp. rainwarrior (for the controller recommendation -- I'm picking one of these up this weekend). Glad to know "it's just me", re: how I feel about the controls vs. level design. I'm gonna stick with it for now and see how it feels on an F310.

It's not just you, I've heard a large number of [speedrunners, etc] complain about trying to use analog for what amounts to a d-pad. It looks like you only need eight directions in the game (correct me if I'm wrong) but…inability to configure controls in 2016? Really?

Though, attempting to do one of the "treat gamepad buttons/directions as keyboard keys" solutions might work? I remember when that was the primary way to make games accept gamepad input…

From what I've read, it seems the keypad control configuration relies on using the mouse as well. So, people have had difficulty setting up things like JoytoKey to get it to work.

Myask wrote:It looks like you only need eight directions in the game (correct me if I'm wrong)

There's plenty of value in having analog directions in this game. Enemies can come at you from any angle. There's an advantage to being able to pick a more specific direction of escape.

Though it is true that a lot of the layout is axis aligned, and there are a few areas where having your motion limited to cardinal directions might have made it easier not to slip up. There's a handful of "dash" challenges where you are jumping between platforms that probably would have been less difficult with a d-pad, but I don't think any of them were unfair with the analog control.


There is also the tremendously stupid 800 dash challenge, but this wouldn't have been helped by a d-pad. It's also entirely optional and not particularly important to accomplish. (I actually used the keyboard + mouse controls to do it, kind of an exploit.)

Myask wrote:inability to configure controls in 2016? Really?

I don't know what "2016" has to do with your expectations, but this has always been the standard for console games, and I think the frequency of PC games doing the same has been increasing over time as the "xbox controller" standard became pervasive. I think you're a lot more likely to see configurable controls in a 1996 PC game than you are in 2016. I don't like this trend, but it's the way things have gone.

That said, it's always better when they're configurable, and I do wish HLD had extra configuration, not just of controls.

Mercenary Kings is definitely my favorite Metal Slug-inspired game, but I'm a sucker for Paul Robertson's art style.

M_Tee wrote:Mercenary Kings is definitely my favorite Metal Slug-inspired game, but I'm a sucker for Paul Robertson's art style.

I hadn't heard of this one. (I'm extremely oblivious to anything post-Dreamcast)

It looks really cool. At first impression I feel some of the RPG elements would feel weird in this style of game but I know it's not fair to judge without playing. I have a feeling they were probably good choices for balancing the game for a home console experience rather than arcade. Still though, it looks like it might play closer to Cave Story than Metal Slug.

For some reason it kills me that this review says the game looks like "another 8-bit nostalgia trip" with gameplay that looks "straight out of an NES classic like Contra or Megaman." Reeeeeally? https://youtu.be/czoyOrIst_4

I did try it a little bit but since it felt like an open world game and didn't know where to go next, I kind of lost interest of it. Maybe I will try it again another time.

Graphics does look good, just not just what I was supposed to do next.

Yeah, I noticed the same thing in that review. Anyway, the same artist worked on the Scott Pilgrim game which is very heavily inspired by River City Ransom and definitely worth checking out as well.