Reception
| Reception | |
|---|---|
| Aggregate scores | |
| Aggregator | Score |
| GameRankings | 84% |
| Metacritic | 82/100 |
| Review scores | |
| Publication | Score |
| Eurogamer | 7/10 |
| IGN | 7.4/10 |
| PC Gamer UK | 8.1/10 |
| GameCritics | 9/10 |
Aquaria was the Seumas McNally winner of the 2007 Independent Games Festival, and was also a finalist in the categories of Design Innovation, Excellence in Visual Art, and Excellence in Audio. The festival praised the game's "fluid controls, unique, non-linear gameplay, and vibrant hand-drawn storybook-style graphics". The game received praise from many different reviewers; Cam Shea of IGN called it "a stunning effort from such a small team", Richard Naik of GameCritics called it "an extremely high-quality product" and a fine example of the side-scroller genre, while Chris Dahlen of The A.V. Club termed it "not so much a retro adventure as a fresh take on everything that made the old 2D adventures great". Praise for the game was centered primarily on its visuals and atmosphere. Hyper's Tim Henderson commended the game for "a rare and genuine sense of exploration, wonder and discovery", and a review by Scott Colbourne from The Globe and Mail termed it "drop-dead beautiful" with a "deep and affecting story". Colbourne summarized Aquaria as "a game you can get comfortably lost in".
Other reviewers, such as Tom Bramwell of Eurogamer and Chris Holt of Macworld echoed the praises for the graphics and atmosphere, while Craig Pearson of PC Gamer UK added praises for the music and voiceovers and Suzie Ochs of MacLife praised the music and story. Other praises for the game came for its control scheme and for the gameplay mechanics, with Holt calling out the cooking system as worthy of praise. Though noting that the visuals and presentation of the game would be the first thing that players noticed, Nathan Cocks of PC PowerPlay claimed that "from a design standpoint, Aquaria is a triumph," with the right amount of complexity and level design that is "spot on".
Several reviewers, such as Bramwell and Holt, criticized the map system present in the initial version of the game as being confusing and difficult. Other reviewers had different concerns, such as Henderson, who critiqued the initial release version for "lack of widescreen support and being occasionally fiddly", or Naik, who felt that the control scheme was not as intuitive when using an Xbox 360 controller. Shea and Pearson felt that the game could have used more puzzles or a wider variety of quests and objectives to balance out the exploration and combat. They did not feel, though, that these downsides compared to the game's positives, with Pearson stating that "the good far outweighs what are, essentially, niggles."
Read more about this topic: Aquaria (video Game)
Famous quotes containing the word reception:
“Aesthetic emotion puts man in a state favorable to the reception of erotic emotion.... Art is the accomplice of love. Take love away and there is no longer art.”
—Rémy De Gourmont (1858–1915)
“He’s leaving Germany by special request of the Nazi government. First he sends a dispatch about Danzig and how 10,000 German tourists are pouring into the city every day with butterfly nets in their hands and submachine guns in their knapsacks. They warn him right then. What does he do next? Goes to a reception at von Ribbentropf’s and keeps yelling for gefilte fish!”
—Billy Wilder (b. 1906)
“But in the reception of metaphysical formula, all depends, as regards their actual and ulterior result, on the pre-existent qualities of that soil of human nature into which they fall—the company they find already present there, on their admission into the house of thought.”
—Walter Pater (1839–1894)