Designing a game with steep difficulty in mind can make for some truly extraordinary experiences. Laika: Aged Through Blood is a Metroid-like where you control a dog woman as she attempts to keep her village alive in a world that has been dominated by evil birds. It’s a surprisingly large game with some truly unique mechanics, and I found it deeply engrossing from start to finish. But I’ve also got a sizable laundry list of issues with many of the choices it makes, as a lot of its mechanics were very clearly chosen to make the game “harder.”
The thing is, they don’t necessarily do that. For the most part, I didn’t find Laika: Aged Through Blood to be all that difficult. Instead, I found the mechanics intended to pass for difficulty either meaningless or, at worst, downright vexing. You start off with nothing but a revolver that somehow only carries two bullets by default. Why? Because getting shot to death due to having almost no ammo is “hard.” Both the player character and enemies die to just a single hit, which greatly reduces the possible level of difficulty, as everything needs to be manageable with this in mind. It’s a persistent weight around the game’s neck.
Upon death, you’ll lose half your currency and drop a sack. Lose all of your sacks, and they’ll all vanish. Adding this Soulslike mechanic simply does not synergize well with the one-hit kill design. It’s simply another wrinkle to make things “harder.” But this becomes trivial as you purchase more sacks.
Throughout most of the game, I never truly had to worry about losing my currency. One of the worst facets here is that you’ll also die just from landing badly on your bike. Or flipping upside down. Or hitting a wall or something. Much like the other aspects, this doesn’t add anything of value. It’s just another annoyance, as I often shot my way through enemies only to have to go back to a checkpoint because my bike tipped over.
You get around in Laika: Aged Through Blood on your bike (or a boat in one section), and it controls similarly to a Trials game. One button accelerates, and you lean in either direction to properly navigate the world and do flips. Bizarrely, you can only reload with a backflip, which is simultaneously cool and makes absolutely no sense. Front flips, on the other hand, recharge your deflect, which can knock bullets back to your enemies. When the camera is up close, flipping mostly works fine. But there are times when the camera pans out, and it becomes difficult to tell if your position will get you killed upon landing.
An indicator on the crosshair (which doesn’t actually work like a crosshair, making it feel like guesswork when aiming at foes) will show you which direction you’re pointing, but this only shows while aiming; plus, you’ll end up covered in blood a lot of the time, which will make it even harder to tell which direction you’re facing. There’s just so much here that’s designed to make the game more frustrating. But the enemies are usually not much of a threat at all, as the combat never really changes. Some boss fights are much tougher, although those can be horribly aggravating as well.
“In Laika: Aged Through Blood, you get seconds of time slowed down when you go to fire a weapon, which lends the game a lot of satisfaction…”
One boss fight has you go up against a robot crap. The fight has three phases, takes multiple minutes, is very easy, but it took me a lot of tries because I’d almost always have a single thing go slightly wrong, requiring me to start the fight from the beginning.
I’ve been doing a huge amount of complaining, but I do honestly really enjoy Laika. The world is large (even if the levels can feel pedestrian and often barren), and there are a lot of side quests. The game is also simply very fun to play, as the movement feels great once it clicks. There are also upgrades to buy, and the visuals are absolutely fantastic.
Laika overcomes all of the issues I mentioned, for the most part. The controls just feel truly excellent when they work as intended. Taking the bike through the world feels just as responsive as it needs to, and it’s really something to nail a flip or change your direction in midair before hitting the ground. The bike’s body acts as a shield against bullets, and carefully positioning yourself to block these and keep yourself alive is one of the game’s joys.
Speaking of joys, in Laika: Aged Through Blood, you get seconds of time slowed down when you go to fire a weapon, which lends the game a lot of satisfaction, and you take the time to line up shots or avoid harm. The gameplay here really pulls the experience together into more than the sum of its parts.
While some players won’t want to mess with Laika: Aged Through Blood’s many annoyances, anyone who’s willing to see past them will find one of the more captivating Metroid-likes of recent years, even if they might find themselves rolling their eyes at how aggravating the game can be.
