Hyper Light Drifter

Hyper Light Drifter is juggling a lot of influences. Its gameplay is essentially a 2D Zelda with elements of Dark Souls, but not enough to actually be labeled a Soulslike. From Shadow of the Colossus, it takes not the colossi for once, but the tone of contrasting serenity and intensity. And its art style is like a mashup of Another World and FEZ. Hell, it’s even got the same composer as FEZ delivering a masterpiece of electronic haze, and it’s got a similar text-deciphering puzzle that serves as a Rosetta Stone for the plot. It does all of these inspirations enough justice to warrant a recommendation, but it also hosts a number of imperfections that keep it from true greatness.

Take the visuals, for example. They’re spectacularly detailed and animated – so much so that they obscure the path forward and the interactivity of the environment. That environment is a wonderfully-realized science fantasy setting that also contains a lot of backtracking, even if you’re not looking for its many hidden secrets. It’s also a necessary storytelling tool, because the actual narrative is completely wordless. It’s got the usual Dark Souls problem of not being clear about what the hell is going on until you’ve discovered every scrap of information, but its themes and symbolism are striking even before you’ve determined their context. Unfortunately, hunting down that context will take so long that it will inevitably exhaust the combat’s thrill. Prior to that, the combat is excellent. It’s fast, impactful, and precisely controlled, with sizeable challenge and depth, but not so much that it becomes overwhelming…except for one boss…and when it gives you a checkpoint after you’ve run out of healing items. There’s also a local co-op mode that was very clearly an afterthought, based on its half-hearted balance attempts.