We reviewed Crossing Souls

Driftwood
Tuesday, February 13, 2018 | 3:05 PM
7 comments

GSY Review PC PS4

Maybe you were expecting the review of a medieval first person adventure game this week, but our leap in time was much closer than we expected last week. Crossing Souls will indeed take you back to the glorious 80s to follow the adventures of a bunch of pixelated kids. Put on your Adidas Nastase and your fluorescent t-shirt and you'll be set for our review.

Verdict

Our first contact with Crossing Souls in Cologne last August had been quite encouraging, so it is no surprise that the final version has turned out to confirm most of our good impressions. Not everything is perfect of course, mainly because we found gameplay to be a little too imprecise at times, but developer Fourattic has managed to achieve quite an impressive amount of work to make the game what it is. With a good longevity for the genre (especially considering it's an indie pixel art game), with varied locations to visit and multiple sorts of gameplay sequences to play, Crossing Souls does a great job at making up for its shortcomings, namely the (very) few potential frustrating sequences that we have come across. The game offers a nice journey back in time, with a storyline that is faithful to the movies which inspired the developers and more dramatic than you'd first expect. A game with a soul, which is probably what will make players enjoy it the way we have for 10/12 hours of a nice pixelated ride.

On the plus side
Endearing characters
Enjoyable story
Generous content and pretty good length
Much variety both in terms of gameplay and locations
A nice tribute to the pop culture of the 80s
The cutscenes made to look like a cartoon from the 80s
Great art style
The OST

On the downside
Controls are not alwyas perfect
Not always easy to "read" the environment
Some sequences toward the end could have been made shorter
A little bit of frustration in a couple of scenes

High quality stream and download

Commented on 2018-02-13 15:29:10

Thanks for reviewing Crossing Souls.
Seems right up my alley, so I'm definitely gonna check it out.

Also, it would be nice if you could add to the news description the fact that there's a Demo available for the game (link below):

Steam - Crossing Souls Demo - Available Now:
http://steamcommunity.com/games/331690/announcemen...

This way, those that are interested in it might give the demo a try to see if they like it enough to buy or not.

In reply to

rm_london

Commented on 2018-02-13 17:07:18

Agree about demo info ^

der_ton

Commented on 2018-02-13 18:18:53

Thanks for that hint, gonna check it out!

Commented on 2018-02-13 21:25:17

Having played the demo and watched the videos here, I'm sorry to say that I don't like the art style at all. It's pixel art of the cheap kind. That also ties into the "hard to read environment" in the GSY verdict that I agree with. But also the character portraits and sprites look really very bland and uninteresting to me. I'm not biased against pixel art in general at all, BTW.

Gameplay, story and writing seem to be great though. :)

KORNdog

Commented on 2018-02-13 21:42:33

This game looks lovely. Not really sure if it is of the same ilk, but it’s giving me oxenfree vibes. Might have to pick this one up.

Commented on 2018-02-14 04:35:33

:D
Played the demo but not yet watched the GSY vids. I found I liked the art but not for the "talking heads". It seemed to contrast with the rest of the in-game art direction too much for my liking. I did enjoy the cutscenes though.

The dialogue didn't do it for me but I've some interest in the story - maybe my mind will be changed after I've seen further into the game, past all the intro/tutorial section.

Also not so keen on the combat gameplay - would have to check later in the game, further than the scope of the demo, to see what it offers.

I'll watch the vids and the stream VOD, see if they change my current perspective.

Thanks for the content GSY.

Commented on 2018-02-18 23:30:56

I played the demo again and realised one reason why the combat felt weird for me: the mouse is not constrained to the character for melee combat. It's the same for ranged combat but it's often better to allow free-aim for that - problem is the mouse cursor is easily lost.