Once again, we find ourselves at the reverse end of a game I picked up back in the day via a humble bundle. It looked interesting so I figured "why not?" Well, it's not the worst decision I've ever made, but whether that's because it wasn't bad or it was short is up for debate. Probably a bit of both, though.
Story: I.. honestly don't think there is really a story here. Yes, you slowly turn into a robot as you play and make your way through the levels, but if there is any meaning to this, it's lost on me. Hell even the game's steam page says (and I quote) "Decide what your story is in Metrico+" so I don't think anyone is trying to tell any story here.
N/A
Graphics: Metrico is not a game that will impress you with it's looks in a traditional sense, opting instead for a very minimalist look. The world you interact with will be made of simple geometric shapes such as pyramids, blocks, and cylinders... and little else. The only shading at all in this world is to give these objects their 3D depth, be it something simple, but majestic in the background or the single layer you will play in. And yet at the same time, this simple look gives the world a cohesive theme of running around through graphs like you might see in a business presentation. Seriously, that is exactly what this game looks like.
Most of the time, it will be you doing this on your own as there are VERY few entities (I am hard pressed to call them enemies so much as just things) that will populate this world. And you are a little more detailed, but not much. It's clear your character is 3D rendered as well, but you have zero shading, leaving you just an outline of either a generic male or female character. That extra detail basically makes your outline more refines but not much else.
As for those other entities, well, they are nothing more then moving objects you will have to use/avoid to complete the puzzles as you move along. There are exactly 4, each with their own function, but the most important one being the circle. This pretty much marks the end of each of the world you are in as well as where you will be slowly made more robotic as mentioned in the story section.
Overall it's actually a pleasing look to the game, but make no mistake, there is a reason why just about any potato machine can run this game well.
7/10
Sound: By the very length of the game, you can expect the music here to also be very limited, but in essence you can also expect it to generally sound how the background music a generic instruction training video to introduce new employees to a job might sound... it has that same perky but generic feel, which, based on the feel the graphics go for, may well be the intent. It's pleasant enough, but it's not designed to stay with you any longer then elevator music... or the time it takes anyone late to the presentation to get to their seat before the presentation can introduce it's main speaker.
Don't expect a lot out of the sound effects either, since the game really doesn't have much. None of the entities make any noise, so everything is a noise you create, be it your steps, your huff as you jump or other ways you interact with the world. It sounds good enough, but the game just didn't call for much at all.
And of course, with a setup this devoid of story, there really isn't much in the way of voice work, either, so if you expected at least a commentary, you are in the wrong place.
7/10
Gameplay: With everything else almost designed to stay out of the way, the gameplay is where you are going to focus on this one, for better or for worse. Metrico+ is in essence a side-scrolling platform puzzle game with the gimmick of the world you playing in being made up of the kind of graphs you might see in a business presentation to see how a company is doing. Each world is made of several puzzles (most of which fit in a single screen, though some may take up a few) in which you will have to use the controls you have been offered so far to figure out how these graphs react to your actions and manipulate them to progress to the next one.
This starts simple with only the abilities to run and jump, so there isn't much you can do that the world will react to, but completing each world will leave you at the start of the next one with a new ability to add to that arsenal, and once the game has seen fit to show you the basics of that new ability, you are off to the next set of puzzles, which in turn is allowed to get more complex. Nothing is explained to you through all this beyond the first time you are expected to take advantage of something new, and even that assist is limited: basically if you don't find the new power within a brief time at the beginning of the world, the game will show you what button it's on. It won't tell you what it does, though. That will be up to you to press it and find out. And once you have it, you are off to the races to see what will do what in the next puzzle.
Just be aware that even between puzzles in the same world, how things react to your actions can change, so each puzzle will have it's own set of rules you will have to discover for yourself. But this is also where I actually have to take issue with the game. It's not for difficulty, as anything you face will reveal all the crevasses of it's design to you if you are patient and prod it for them.... most of the time. But it's that "most" I have to get annoyed with. I will explain in the bugs section, but lets just say there may be a time or two you will have to quit and reload the game to complete it late in the game... I did.
The game is also exceptionally short. Spanning 6 worlds, someone who knows the puzzles can complete it from opening screen to end credits in about 45 minutes without too much issue. My own blind run took a little under 4 hours with all the prodding to figure out those puzzles included, and for the record, I'm notorious for taking my time when playing.
Another thing I should note is control choices. When you start the game for the first time, it will recommend a controller, but I am not sure I do, specifically due to a puzzle late in the game. You see, one of the abilities you gain is to fire a projectile, and to aim it. If you are using a controller you do so with the right stick, while on Keyboard and mouse, you use the mouse to do so. The problem is while the mouse lets you aim at specific spots by literally pointing at them, the stick aims a direction... and while I generally would have thought that would be the better choice in a game like this, it also "snaps" into place if you get close enough to a straight fire unlike the absolute freedom the mouse offers. And when you have a puzzle that requires you to aim within the angle that brings about that snap... yeah, it almost breaks the game in an instant. Yes, the controller works more then fine for most of the game, but I wouldn't blame you for switching in that moment.
5/10
Bugs: While the game ran very well for the most part, I can not say it ran perfectly. No it didn't crash or anything like that, but the engine controlling the rules for each puzzle can get wonky. For me one of the last three puzzles in the entire game became just about impossible as it seemed as if the puzzle itself was undecisive of how objects should react to each other... causing a required response to stutter along at random rather then smoothly reply to the moving object it was supposed to. This would have been annoying, but the amount of times you could repeat the actions to complete it is limited by a second object dropping down over the path you have to take to move on. Act too many times and you will have to reset the puzzle, which I did MANY times thanks to this. Reloading the game fixed this, however, managing to let the game scrape by from being considered utterly broken. Still, it's worth noting this can happen.
Digital Rights Management: The only DRM you will need is Steam itself. You need to be logged into an account (at least in offline mode) with the license attached to play but there is no extra anything here beyond that.
Overall: I honestly can't call this a great game by any means. It's interesting, but in the end it doesn't do anything particularly special. Add this to recommending a control scheme that actively handicaps you on one of it's puzzle and a bug that got dangerously close to breaking the game, and it has some seriously unnecessarily frustration baked into it. You can do far better and have something that lasts much longer then this.
Score:
System Requirements:
- Intel Core i5 running at 1.7 Ghz
- Geforce 600 series or AMD Radeon 5400 (must have 128 MB VRAM)
- 1 GB RAM
- Windows Vista (with update KB971644) or Windows 7
- 1 GB hard drive space
System Specs:
- Ryzen 5 5600G running at 3.9 Ghz
- 16 GB RAM
- Windows 11
- PDP DX Wired Controller (Crimson)
Source: Steam
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