Looking for a fun game with a cartoon art-style that won’t leave you broke, so your girl won’t call you a joke? Well scroll on down, and check out what I have to say about the brand new indie game Goliath!
Date Started-To finished: 5/25/2016-5/28/2016
Game Session Length: 15 Hours
Story (Non-Spoiler)
The story of Goliath brings you the main character Gromov which is an unknown aged adolescent that finds himself in a horrid predicament searching for his co-pilot, Dave. His plane crashes into this unknown world which he later discovers is a completely new universe. Little did Gromov know that Dave crashed in another planet, setting his adventure up to look for Dave. Throughout Gromov’s journey, Gromov is trying to find helpful creatures and people to complete his goal of leaving this cold and harsh universe, filled with brutal fictional animals and monsters. Gromov’s main goal is to go back to Earth. Though the story is of course fictional, there are a few bits and pieces about this story that doesn’t make a lot of sense early on and had never been properly answered. For an example, how does a plane go out in space and land in another universe? Also, what actually happened in the beginning in the game for Gromov and Dave to crash and stumble upon a completely new universe? Now I can say the character development does get smarter within his dialogue as the journey continues. But there should’ve been at least questions answered to help connect and build a better intriguing story to become less predictable.
Graphics
This game looks solid. It integrates 5 options, lowest, low, normal, high, and ultra. For an unrealistic setting, the game looks good. Usually with games of this art style, you would come across jaggys on the outline of some characters and certain props like bushes, trees, and sometimes weapons. I came across none. The weather effects are satisfying to look at, with the lightning, rain, and snowstorms that appear on occasion.
Audio
The game’s music is by no means lazy and I can appreciate that. For the majority of planets, the game had me listening to something new, but I found other locations reusing the same songs. Keep in mind the songs aren’t really going to make you stop and listen to the rhythm of the beat. They’re not the type to make you contemplate life. But the theme music for these planets does fit within the environment and seems substantially natural. The sound impact with the fighting had satisfying feedback and the grunts of those impacts never got old or annoying. Environment sounds like the weather and birds in the background sounded actually real, especially the thunder, and lightning.
Game-play
The game-play is absolutely something new. The game’s staple is its RPG elements including an inventory system, crafting system for medical items, weapons, gear, and upgrades, unlock-able powers, and a very minimal one way dialogue system. With the action, you can have up to 3 different Goliaths in your slot (that you can use at anytime) to mix up your play style. The cool thing about the Goliaths is that you can use them however you’d like. This could mean you could set up a 3 Goliath army with you playing as Gromov or you can be a Goliath with a 2 Goliath army guarding your back. I found mixing up different environmental elements to attach to your Goliath to be enjoyable and it had me trying out different combinations. Goliaths react to the environments that you’re in. For example, if a wooden Goliath is in the desert and it gets too hot, the wooden Goliath burns slowly and loses hp. If a fire Goliath is in the desert and it gets too hot, it gains hp. So be careful when it comes to what type of area you’re in when you choose a Goliath.
Also note, that the A.I is not the brightest of A.I’s; they get trapped easily, animals sleep while getting shot at, your allies can’t properly defend themselves, and they die easily. The only time where I could visually appreciate the A.I was when a bird ran away from my Goliath, because it knew it could simply not defeat me alone. The bird ran to its buddy and jumped me. Other than that the A.I is not bright.
Fighting is absolutely rewarding, because of the difficulty of some enemies. You have to analyze the enemy’s speed and power which forces you into taking a different tactical approach to defeat the enemies.
Conclusion
Now it sickens me to say this: I could not finish this game due to the fact of a major game breaking bug. The development team (Whalebox) could not fix it because of an in game cheat mechanic they had implemented. The main story mode quest (“Lost in translation”) was broken and I could not continue further. It hurts me to do this but it shall definitely have a negative effect upon the score of the game. Even the fact of this game being only $20, I can’t recommend a game that has bug so bad it break  unless a patch is implemented to cure this unfortunate mishap.
Another embarrassing flaw (which I still don’t know how a game doesn’t have in 2016) was lack of a quicksave option. There was no manual save at the time I played. Now, as of today, Whalebox did implement a quicksave, but I’m afraid it came too late. Now, this is a great game overall: very fun and addicting with a large map to explore. It can be very grind-some with the loot and level system. But it’s clear this game had came out a bit too soon and should’ve been worked on a little more.
