Review - Metrico
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Review by Jon Evans
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Developers; Digital Dreams
Publisher; Sony Format; PS Vita US Release date; 5th August, EU Release Date;6th August |
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Metrico, brought to us by Dutch Developer, Digital Dreams, is a PS Vita title based around the design and structure of Infographics. If you’ve been to visual.ly recently, you’ll be familiar with the style. It’s a visually striking game, with a enigmatic slant at puzzle solving and platforming.
Presented as a 2.5D side-scrolling platformer, Metrico leaves a lot for the gamer to work out. The menu system is minimalist and simple, with little text to let you know what each button does. Much like the game, navigation is trial and error, and the first choice you get is to choose between two different obscure looking icons before you start, again with no information as to what you are choosing (although I suspect this lets you choose the gender of your character). You find yourself as a running silhouette in a coloured flat world that is based around the graphs, charts and flow diagrams of an infographic visualisation. Appealing to the more discerning gamer of the, ahem, OCD nature the gameplay is crisp and precise and requires pinpoint timing and strategy to complete the levels. 
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Much of the game is exploring how your character affects the levels depending on your input. The various platforms, slopes and obstructions move, grow and shrink depending on how you move and in which direction. They have metrics attached to them, such as measurement scales and percentage flags, allowing you precise comparisons as you go through the trial and error process. There are various spawn points on each level that you can selectively save at, and these become part of the solution, where your position within the level is critical to solving it and passing through to the next. The gameplay is weighed on this and you will find yourself dying multiple times before the solution is presented to you. It is then a case of following all the steps again, in the right order, perfectly to get to the next level.
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Much has been said about the potential of the Vita and its various sensory inputs, but Metrico puts these to good use, although this may restrict the user from playing the game in certain conditions. Some levels require the user to tilt the Vita in a certain direction, while tapping on the screen and moving your character all at once. I was reminded of the contortions I was forced to do with the controller when playing Heavy Rain, although, in this case, it was less frustrating. You might get some funny looks playing this game on the train. The different types of input and interactivity are themes for each section of the game, and these are laid out as zones on an underground stye map (probably, in part, where the name of the game comes from).
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For the serious obsessive compulsive you can also solve these puzzles perfectly. Despite some pretty stringent restrictions, it is possible to get through each zone in more than one way, and fudge your way to the solution, but you can also position the various moving obstacles so that they match up to defined metrics within each level. These are denoted by dashed lines where the perfect stop position is located. Get each block or slice to these points and a collectible appears for you to collect, presumably with a trophy associated with it. You do have a feeling, sometimes, that you've missed something as you go through the game, but you can replay any level again, once you've played through it once.
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The difficulty level rises to the point that later levels can be frustrating, although to be fair to the game, this is pitched at the sort of player who relishes the challenge and difficulty. Without spoiling the game, the sensory inputs are not as cut and dry as earlier ones in the game and it can take a lot of experimentation to get each level right. Nevertheless, each zone is different, interesting and visually surprising. The soundtrack, created by Dutch Composer, ‘Palmbomen’ suits the style of the game, but can tend to become repetitive when you have replayed certain levels over and over again.
Metrico is an interesting take on the puzzle platformer and has a modern, relevant look to it. This is less whimsical and cutesy and will appeal more to the serious, precise platform fan. The focus here is on not insulting the player’s intelligence, but in letting the player discover the solution in many different and elegant ways. Metrico may frustrate at times, but, unlike tomorrow’s 9 am powerpoint presentation, it will not bore you. |
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Wrap up
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Good - Challenging, varied and with a unique visual style. Promotes deep exploration.
Bad - Title menu is initially confusing. Music can be repetetive after multiple plays |
3.5/5 |
Game provided by Digital Dreams
Screenshots provided courtesy of Digital Dreams
Screenshots provided courtesy of Digital Dreams
