Whilst Ratalika Games often select and port over some excellent under the radar mobile or PC games to console, sometimes they shoot and miss. Reed Remastered for me, is a huge miss. Uninspired, basic, ugly and frustratingly mundane, it is fair to say I didn’t get on with Reed Remastered at all. I’ll explain why as it may be just me.
The first thing that irked me upon starting Reed Remastered was its graphical design and colour palette. Everything has a green, brown colour with an orange hue over it making it too busy and often tricky to make out. This led to many deaths as I mistook backgrounds for platforms or simply didn’t see traps. My back was up already and doubly so as initially Reed Remastered seems like a very straight forward and easy game. Travel across the level, unlock the door, get to the door to escape…. ah. Silly me.
Your character is a one-hit kill deal and it’s back to the beginning of the level. The levels are short thankfully but if you’ve already opened the door, it’s extra annoying to then do it all over again. This is exasperated by Reed’s jump which feels imprecise and somewhat underpowered. The character barely gets any lift and often you think you’ll make something and won’t. Occasionally collision detection issues mean you won’t be deemed on a ledge and will slip off and crumple into a mess. Usually, death comes from a mistimed jump or being struck by an arrow. These arrows are on a timer that doesn’t seem to restart between deaths whereas platforms that move seem to. That led me to a few instances of impossible levels where a quick death reset things back again.
Then there is the simple gameplay. There is a niche for this when it is done well but when you are already fighting ugly graphics and some strange physics – you can’t rely on coasting in on safe and samey gameplay. The difficulty does ramp up over time although I wasn’t sure if it was due to me getting frustrated and losing my patience or if the level designs really stacked up the difficulty. To give Reed Remastered its due though, at least what you get was consistent throughout. If you want a basic platformer that is all about avoiding shooting arrows and solving very narrowly structured levels, it gives you exactly that. It just wasn’t for me.
Review copy provided by the publisher.
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