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Laika: Aged Through Blood is a 9/10 experience built on a 6.5/10 game. This game has so much going for it - fantastic music, gorgeous art, and a hard-hitting story that serves as this game's heartbeat - that I'm able to overlook a lot of the issues with the game's core mechanics. Was easily worth both my time and money, even if I don't know if I'm planning it on playing it again.

PROS
+ Art good
+ Music good
+ Strong story

CONS
- Gameplay gets stale and backtrack-y
- Not really a metroidvania

A self-described "motorvania," Laika: ATB blends the 2D physics-based motorcycle mechanics you know (and maybe love, I don't know) from mobile games and flash games of old with a large, interconnected map that you explore. Does the game deliver on this premise?

No.

I think Laika: ATB fundamentally fails at being a metroidvania. In a genre that is becoming especially crowded nowadays, I think it's really weird for what is such a polished game to miss the mark so badly. The whole point of metroidvanias is that as you play through the game, you unlock new things that open up the map in new ways, letting you revisit old areas with new eyes to find secrets and unveiling massive sections of the map. In Laika, there are really only two "things" that open up the map in this way - one you get within about the first hour of a normal playthrough, and one you get in the last hour of a normal playthrough. For the majority of the playthrough, you have the same skill set, and the map becomes stagnant. It's especially odd because there are so many things that seem like they would be perfect for this exact thing, but they just... aren't used for anything. There's a point in the game where you unlock something new and use it to blow up a destructible wall, and I thought "Oh great! I bet this unlocks a new section somewhere!" It doesn't. It's used for one very specific thing for the rest of the game and nothing else, and it just feels like wasted potential or even a demo map for a much larger game.

The game also doubles down on this failure in the game design by creating a lot of boring backtracking. Sure, you'll revisit the same areas a few times, but not because you are coming back to find something new. It's more like replaying the same levels a few times because the game needs you to get X from Y location, so you just suck it up and run it back through the levels without much changing. Thankfully, the game does give you something that trivializes a lot of these areas in the endgame which makes running through the last few quests a lot more bearable.

This also represents a problem with the game's quests. I understand that there are a bunch of fundamental limitations on what exactly you can ask the player to do in a game like Laika, but having 90% of quests be glorified versions of "Go here, press E, go back, press E" does get old very quickly. It just feels like obviously leaving things on the table - it's a vehicle game, but we don't have any time attacks. It's (nominally) a game about exploration, but there aren't puzzles or secrets. It's a game about combat and warfare, but we are just going to ask the player to fight the same fodder enemies in the same configuration for all two (TWO!) combat quests I remember getting in my 100% play-through.

And on that note, yes, there is a very very evident lack of enemy variety. There's like... 3 non-boss enemies you fight the entire game, and because of the way the game's designed, they're also all in the same locations every time, which means you very quickly run out of actually engaging combat situations. Once you figure out the line for a room, that's pretty much it.

The bosses are also a little underwhelming. It's kind of sad that I think the game actually peaks with the first boss in the intro segment - it's really tense and engaging, even if it's not actually that mechanically challenging to beat. I really wish that the game leaned into that Shadow of the Colossus style of using bosses as these geometries for the player to interact with mid-fight, leaning more into the mobility aspect of the vehicle game by creating these ramps and stuff for the player to have fun with instead of making bosses these background set pieces that create simplistic "Dodge these projectiles then shoot them" challenges.

I think if I had to sum up my thoughts on the gameplay, it would be "half-baked." The game is fundamentally actually very solid: running through the game is pretty fun, the mechanics are satisfying, and there are a lot of things that I do like about it. For my negativity, John Wick-ing a screen of cannon fodder extras in bullet time while backflipping on a motorcycle is always going to be at least a little fun. The game also leans into the "punishing players for death stops them from doing cool things" philosophy, which makes the game much more fun for me. There's just so many things in this game that feel like the start of something great, but aren't all the way there.

Half-baked is also something that applies to all the non-combat aspects of normal gameplay. Upgrades and unlocks generally just amount to "Go here, shoot X" and aren't something that really change the game in any meaningful way. The full expanded arsenal of weapons sounds like fun until you realize that you pretty much never want to swap off the revolver ever, especially since some of the weapons are pretty much just worse versions of what the revolver already does (cough cough Sniper Rifle cough cough). The cooking system seems really fun but it's also just feels unfinished and shallow. The potential for awesome gameplay depth is right there, but the game just can't quite grasp it.

Ok, so the game is half-baked, but it is serviceable. The mechanics do what they need to do to make the rest of the game work: they give the player something to do while going from point A to point B, they keep the game's pace in check to prevent story beats from just hitting back to back to back over and over again, they have a place in the game's story in a way that I didn't really expect, and they sell the player on one of the core tenets that makes the game's story click: you really do feel like the most powerful entity in the Wastelands.

Convincing the player of that is the step 0 to why this game is so worth your time and money: the story. I wouldn't even characterize this game as one that's exceptionally well-written - a lot of the dialogue is kinda corny, if we're being honest - but man does the game want to hit you in the feels. It's Fallout NV's antithesis - both games have the same premise of you being an unkillable gunman in post-apocalyptica with a habit of making enemies explode into random gibs in slow motion, but they explore totally different sides of that coin. Where Fallout NV uses this premise to give the player incredible latitude to alter the course of the world, Laika does the absolute opposite, and it's amazing. It's not a game about deep moral questions - you're fighting against Captain Kidgutter and Corporal I-Mutilate-Babies, for God's sake - but the linearity is what makes the story work.

Of course, all of this is on top of a fantastic soundtrack, sweet sound design, and gorgeous-looking art. This game's OST delivers banger after banger, to the point where some of the music feels TOO good for what it's actually for. I don't know who in Brainwash told Beicoli to go this hard on music that just plays when I'm toodling around the desert, but it's fantastic. The game looks fantastic as well, with a 2D aesthetic that works incredibly well for the game. I kind of wish we got some more vistas to look at, but it's a statement that this game is still breathtaking in the era of modern graphics.

If you enjoy this game, you will enjoy it for the story, graphics, and soundtrack. The gameplay is just how those elements actually get to you as a player more than anything else.