![]() ![]() By this time I’ve become aware of Eastward’s true villain and witnessed one of their acts of mass destruction, but this plot point is ignored for five hours to focus on a cooking sidequest that tells me nothing new about the protagonists or their situation. So John and Sam spend the next five hours-one quarter of the time it takes me to finish Eastward-gathering cooking ingredients. To avoid Lee’s ominous but non-specific threats, John must create a meal that will appease him. John and Sam arrive at a thriving city and run afoul of Lee, the proprietor of the local gambling establishment. The problem with Eastward’s impressive level of detail is it often gets in the way of enjoyable pacing. The level of detail woven into Eastward’s various environments is impressive, creating a dense tapestry of character and incident that makes its world feel real and alive in ways few other videogames accomplish. Board, a man whose job is to be a billboard. All of these NPCs change positions throughout each chapter, each having new things to say as they advance their mundane lives in the background of John and Sam’s imaginative adventures. An old man and his robot friend wander the streets of a city, marveling at how much the city has changed, how much the old man has changed, and how the robot hasn’t changed at all. A young woman named Emily chafes against the farm community she was born into, John and Sam’s arrival driving her to dream of a different life someplace else. A mother and daughter shop in a grocery store, the daughter frustrated with her mother’s indecision over which fruit to purchase. After school lets out, children cluster outside the corner shop to play a videogame called Earth Born on a rusty kiosk.Įach city John and Sam visit is overflowing with non-player characters living their own lives. Between them lies a shopping district where a dead ringer for Hayao Miyazaki sells milk and vile purple fruits called sandrupes. Residents live in rusty motorhomes and converted buses in a disused quarry-except for the mayor, whose opulent townhouse sits apart in a one-home suburb guarded by uniformed police officers. ![]() Strolling through Potcrock Isle in the first chapter alone is evocative. John and Sam stroll through Potcrock Isle’s residential district. If he is especially diligent in his exploration of the environment he can discover orb fragments which combine in sets of four into further new hit points. When he defeats a boss, he earns a new hit point. He uses tools like bombs to break down crumblings walls and a flamethrower to clear out plant infestations-or to apply more brute force against the post-apocalypse’s monsters. He fights primarily in melee combat, wielding an upgradeable frying pan against threats to himself and Sam. ![]() But a malevolent figure from Sam’s past pursues the pair, troubling their search for a home which carries them further and further eastward.Īt its heart, Eastward is an old-fashioned top-down action-adventure videogame, reminiscent of 16-bit classics like The Legend of Zelda and Beyond Oasis. Instead of the certain death they were promised, John and Sam find the surface is vibrant and filled with other surviving communities where they may be welcome. The odd pair soon prove too disruptive for Potcrock Isle’s despotic mayor, who banishes them to the surface world on a train called Charon. While toiling away at his job as a digger, John uncovers Sam, sealed and apparently asleep inside a tube in a ruined laboratory. John lives a tough life on Potcrock Isle, a subterranean settlement where a small community shelters against an unnamed calamity that befell the rest of humanity. John discovers Sam in a sealed subterranean lab. ![]()
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