Icey

I did not enjoy Icey. That’s not to say the game has merit, the game play is very fun, if a little unbalanced and with a plethora of unless upgrades and combos. As well as some very unfair enemy design, meaning you will either find yourself in a room with enemies with un-blockable grab moves with zero startup. Or giant enemies with AOE’s that extend across half the stage, rise up off the ground just enough to knock you prone, and linger for half a minute. Or minuscule flying enemies that juggle you with lasers, with no startup. You know the more I write I realize there’s nothing good to say about the game play as a whole so lets change that starting line a bit shale we.

I did not enjoy Icey and there is little to no merit to this game. However as much as I could rant about the game part of this game I instead want to talk about the ‘Meta’ narrative. If Meta narrative interests you at all, hell if game narrative interests you at all then find this game on YouTube or borrow it from a friend; because it is a prime example of what not to do. The only thing this game got right is the omni-present narrator telling you the story at all time. However, this gold star is immediately ripped away due to the smug, arrogating sounds of the narrator’s voice. If he’s not blandly narrating the world’s most generic action movie then he is insulting the player for there ineptitude or there chose in games. When he’s not whining about how hard he worked on this game and you should appreciate his sacrifice. I understand game design is hard and life draining but I’m sorry if you pull the victim card without acknowledging you made a crap game on top of acting like a complete douche; then I don’t care.

Sorry, that got a little to real for a moment, back to ripping on meta narratives. The main folly of Icey is the complete lack of originality or interesting characters. Near the end of the game I was told to kill some random named NPC, that the game never ONCE mentioned before, for no reason besides; she’s one of the bad guys. It wasn’t even a fight, she was just there and all I had to do was attack. Now if you are going to argue that this was all for the sake of parody or satire I would say that my originality point still stands. If you want to say something about a media you first have to make the world your criticizing make since and fill it with interesting and likable elements. Icey just gives you generic archetypes and the illusion of something deeper. Take Undertale for example and before you call me a raving fan boy know that I don’t really like Undertale all the much.

It was a ray of light in the dark swamp of mediocrity that the industry is prone to walking into from time to every fucking week; however, I believe that some of its themes would have worked better in a less idealistic world and the game play wasn’t for me. However, it was a successful parody of RPG’s and gaming as a whole; and it achieved this though memorable and likable characters as well as new and interesting game play. Icey has none of that, it’s characters are bland and annoying, it’s game play tired and simple, and its ‘message’ is pretensions and poorly executed. Overall a game that I have zero intention of returning to, because there’s nothing of substance left to explore.