The UFO 50 Diaries: Porgy
'I never saved anything for the swim back!'
You know how in last week’s diary entry I was praising Waldorf’s Journey to the ends of the earth and back for utilising a lot of individual components I don’t typically like in a way that gets the most out of them, resulting in a game that was absolutely fantastic despite how punitive it is?
Yeah, well Porgy ain’t that.
An incredibly frustrating experience, Porgy is a game whose central conceit and harmony of mechanics being ‘interesting’ do not save it from feeling absolutely miserable to play.
It’s a Search Action game. Your happy little chappy explores the depths of the ocean to investigate strange happenings, but the ocean is so very deep and your fuel is so very meagre. Once you run out, that's it, back to square one. When you begin there’s not a lot you can do, given how limited your resources are.
Quickly you uncover ‘power ups’ in the environment that improve your fuel efficiency, increase your torpedo range, and more. However, finding these is only one half of the challenge, with each one requiring you to haul them back to base in order to install.
Because of this, the game ends up having this interesting two-fold loop: Recon and heist. You explore to find out where these upgrades are in the world, then you make a plan to grab them and cart them safely back to base.
On paper this is a thrilling piece of design, making every move count, every turn of a corner or expense of energy to zip through an oceanic corridor, it all cuts into this omnipresent countdown. With the only means of refuelling being back at base, (or if you’re really lucky a random drop from a fallen foe), you have to be crystal clear in your intent and goals.
The only problem is, fuel is also health, and this ocean is full of fucking dickheads.
I don’t have an issue with a shared pool of resources in principle. In fact I think it adds to this sense of purposefulness that the game requires. Navigation and combat end up being the same anxiety, you only have so much to give and as such you need to pick your battles, and more critically, understand when to turn around and head back home.
Where I take issue with all this is in execution, not design, as I found myself bashing my head against a game world full of nasty bastards, far too many of whom seemed intent to home in on me as I was minding my own business, taking huge chunks out of my fuel with each attack, often corralling me into situations where I would be stunlocked.
Torpedoes do basically no damage at first, and while you have a dash move that can get you out of a tight situation that too expends vital energy.
Adding to this are the random appearance of larger sea beasts who on top of devastating your fuel bar also block your way, and the random appearance of this little bastard Nemo fish who will try to steal your upgrades as you’re trying to make your way back to base. Also invisible enemies. And bullet hell enemies. Basically, I don’t think I liked a single moment of engaging with any of these creeps.
Coupled with this is the fact that the game world itself is quite frustrating to navigate. As Search Action games are wont to do, you come across so many gates and blockages that very clearly require specific upgrades to navigate, but it’s not clear at all what those upgrades are supposed to be or where the fuck they even are.
The torpedo upgrades just bolster your range, not damage, and the one piece of ‘equipment’ I found, that allowed me to fire an additional torpedo vertically, didn’t seem to have any tangible advantage outside of combat.
So many journeys resulted in dead ends, or access to new regions for which I had no frame of reference how to navigate, and because every second you spend takes away from this vital pool of resources, often when you finally discover something, you might not have enough in the tank to bring it back.
One of the things I’ve been trying to do in my journey with UFO 50 is avoid looking up stuff in guides, but this is one experience where I feel like I have to. I’ve been finding stuff and bringing it back to base, and yet I feel like I’m achieving nothing. I still don’t know how to unlock those gates. I still keep getting stunlocked by all manner of bastards. I still keep wasting runs on poor navigation and dead ends.
A frustrating experience, made all the more so by how genuinely inventive its core mechanical identity is.