Plain Sight Review

Is there something wrong with my games journalism chip?  I’ve lifted the little flap just behind my ear and poked it with a biro and everything seems normal.  It can’t need charging; I’ve drunk enough tea already to give serious thought to a catheter.  Even buying a cat hasn’t helped.  Stupid cat.

It’s not me then.  It must be the game.

Oh, Plain Sight is great is it, all other games writers?  Strange indeed, because I found it to be a baffling gob of rolled annoyance.  But first, descriptions.  Misgivings to follow.

It’s a multiplayer deathmatch involving sword wielding space robots, leaping around within the orbit of each map’s various structures.  Lock on to an opponent while charging your attack with the left mouse button; release when in striking range to fly towards them and cleft them in twain with robosword.  Killing an enemy steals their energy making you more powerful but this will not win the game.  To win you need points.  To gain points your stored energy must be released by self-destructing ‘pon hitting E, and catching players in your deathblast.  Holding on to your energy makes killing your opponents easier and thus increases your chance to prepare bigger, point-multiplying detonations.  Success, however, marks you out as a target; your robot grows and your light trail, something all robots leave behind them as they blast around the arenas, changes colour.  If you get sliced before you self-destruct you’ll end up with nothing and your killer inherits all your energy – it may be safer to blow your bolts every one or two kills, banking smaller points at lower risk.

The matches are all about the generation, transfer and discharge of energy.  It’s a wonderful, elegant concept; to win you must let go of everything you have earned.  It’s pleasingly novel, but there are a number of reasons why I can’t make myself enjoy it.

Annoying but pretty – Plain Sight is the [insert topical celebrity] of PC games

I’ll get this one over with first.  A personal niggle, probably unfair but it’s grating on my nerves for some reason so here it is: Plain Sight is geek bait, extra-strength.  Swords, explosions, robot samurai, anti-gravity acrobatics, self-destruction, art-deco embellishments; all elements which send pulses buzzing through the synapses of PC gamer brains, bypassing our innate scepticism and heading straight for the lobe of involuntary affection.  ‘Robots, swords, self-destruction – this game is going to be awesome!’  It could be the whiff of desperation about its kitsch appeal, but maybe I’m most annoyed because it simply isn’t awesome.

Ya see, its fundamental feature – the combat – just feels like a big nothing.  You’re bound within the orbit of the nearest structure.  This allows you to jump and fling your robot around without worrying about falling off anything.  Power up and release your charge to induce a momentary thrust, towards an enemy if you’re locked on to them.  Pressing shift slams you back down onto the nearest structure.  The mechanics allow frantic aerial play, chasing your lock-ons and weaving about trying to shake off opponents.  But the controls are just not quite precise enough to provide consistent fun and there’s never any sense where the danger or tactical opportunities lie, lost within the jumpy, colourful chaos.

I never got the feeling that I narrowly avoided death by skilfully dodging an attack, or achieved a kill by manoeuvring my robot to be in just the right place to strike.  It always felt like luck more than anything.  On many occasions I lined a robot up in my sights, fully charged my attack, got close enough to activate the red ‘lock-on’ and dashed in sword-first only to ‘just miss’.  Why did I ‘just miss’?  Grr.  Darting about trying to avoid an attack is seemingly as random; even the most rapid dodging is often unable to prevent a fatal, sword themed robo-probing.  Your best bet if under attack is to shelter amid the map’s scenery and get out of sight, only then the game gets a little glitchy.  One example: initiating an attack with scenery nearby has too frequently resulted in me being dragged along in pursuit of my target, catching on objects, unable to move until the dash eventually cancels itself.  It’s stuff that’ll hopefully be patched out but scenery glitches are currently a bit of a problem.

The level designs are fun but can be tricky to navigate

Plain Sight has a series of perks which can be unlocked with points earned from kills.  These include buffs to the dash attack, shields to block killing blows and an indicator that flashes when your robot’s being targeted.  While these encourage different tactical approaches, blocking and parrying using a shield for example, they do appear to uneven the playing field quite quickly.  With some of the more expensive perks offering a distinct advantage, like a self-destruction blast that sucks opponents towards it, they are fun but (coming from bitter personal experience) a considerable arse pain if you can’t get a foothold and start earning a few points to compete.

With the game’s pace matching the twitchiness of Quake 3 or UT but without a consensus as to where the ground is, there’s a need to be able to see what’s going on around you.  Unfortunately, the camera is such that it hampers full 360 viewing, limiting the view to a hemisphere covering the top half of your robot – you can look up and backwards, but not down and backwards – which makes keeping track of opponents all the trickier as you’re back-flipping around the low gravity arenas.

A red exclamation mark means I’m a marked robot – they’ve got a lock

Gravity.  There’s another issue.  You need players on which to lock to direct a thrust away from the gravitational pull of a structure.  When players are fighting it out elsewhere you have to attempt to fling yourself in the direction of the structure where the action is.  Sometimes you make the distance, and your robot is pulled into the new orbit, sometimes you just can’t seem to get away.  Your robot’s sprightly in a fight but getting from A to B can be a real gravitational drag.  This isn’t usually a problem on busy servers but… well, there aren’t all that many busy servers.  Playing peak time yesterday evening, there were a handful of populated servers, only one of which had more than ten players.

Whether anyone will be playing this little indie game online in the future could be a concern for some; there’s a reason not to worry though.  The single player is better.  I only really ‘got’ Plain Sight when I loaded up a practice game with 20 AI set on hard.  Maybe the AI’s pace was slightly slower than the jittery maniacs I’d played against online and this opened up tactical possibilities beyond frantic dodging and chance kills.  Perhaps it was simply the volume of players.  Either way, in a game I’d look to for a half-hour’s quick entertainment, I’d take this immediate fun over online frustration.  If I want to play a game about samurai robots, I kinda want to feel like a samurai robot, not a fluky button-basher.

Were I more enthusiastic about the game I’d say something like ‘BOOOOOOM!!!!’ under this grab

That’s really the fundamental problem with Plain Sight.  Its outstanding features are also the ones that undermine the overall experience.  Its combat is too fast and frenetic; the low gravity allows crazy acrobatics but also hampers movement; the skill perks are a neat idea but widen the gap between the dominating and trailing players.  I think Plain Sight pisses me off most because it just doesn’t feel like you’re really doing anything other than holding W and jumping about a lot.  There’s not enough tactility or feedback when your attacks fail, and there needs to be something beyond a perk to make it easier to track opponents and pre-empt enemy assaults, maybe an audio cue – something to tell you when you need to dodge that would make the game less about blind luck and erratic movement.  Yes, it’s only £8 but, for me, it doesn’t deliver the dizzying thrills described by some.