Lorn's Lure

2024-09-23

Review

At time of writing, until stated otherwise, I have completed four out of the eight levels that this game has, and I must say, Lorn's Lure is a solid 3d FPS platformer, and it managed to do what very few other games manage.

For one, i'd like to start off with a paragraph of this game's atmosphere. While my image is not complete, as far as I have seen, Lorn's Lure is one of the few games that manage to inspire awe with it's scale. Don't get me wrong, I can list more than a few games that convey megastructures (Talos principle 2, Halo, Armored Core), but they don't convey the scale of them quite like Lorn's Lure does. Every other game places focus on reducing downtime within these structures. You don't get to feel their size, only to see it. Lorn's lure differs in that it asks you to actually traverse the megastructures it shows you.

Often times, at the start of a level, you may get to see and to fully take in a view or a vista that opens up.. and then you are tasked with actually crossing it. See a chasm? you're gonna have to cross it. See a faraway patch of land? you're gonna have to go there, and I think that placing the focus (and therefore having it being the main obstacle throughout) is one of the main factors that drive home the scale of the setting of the game.

On top of that, Lorn's Lure has a very solid foundation of movement. I can't pinpoint it, but between the austere sound design, the minimal UI, and the smooth movement base, traversing the world in Lorn's Lure feels very satisfying, except for one caveat.

This is, at the end of the day, an FPS platformer. an uncommmon genre, something that I am not used to. And to top it all off, the game does introduce mechanics that can feel somewhat jarring, especially when you're getting familiar with it. There will be a learning curve to the gameplay regardless of your game literacy. That being said, there is a good variety of new mechanics being constantly introduced into the game. Like most other great games, Lorn's Lure always has something new to show you and to play with, and right when you get bored or used to something, it gives you something new.

It was at this point that I ended up playing the rest of the game, and I must say, the final level of Lorn's Lure is incredibly frustrating, to the point where I would recommend most people turn to a walkthrough and watch the ending from there. And on top of that, there is also a noticeable decline in level quality towards the latter half of the game, most visible at the last and second-to-last levels. Ironically though the lower level quality contributed to the difficulty to the second-to-last level, which made it more enjoyable for me as a gauntlet, but I'm not sure if that was the developer's intent.

On top of that, any game mechanic beyond the very basics feels like it lacks consistency. One of the main game hazards is simply falling to death, and the threshold between life and death when descending is both hard to gauge and doesn't feel consistent at all. Same goes for the majority of the tools you get, whose mechanics are linked to your character's speed. For instance, take the wall jump -- depending on your speed, jumping off of a wall can either give you upwards momentum or poorly break your downwards momentum. The issue is that knowing which is it going to be consistently when descending is nigh impossible, especially when you are making a difficult descent. Same goes for the air dash mechanic, introduced later in the game.

All in all, considering the price, the game's length and the overall experience that the game delivers, Lorn's lure is certainly worth the asking price, and if you are into platformers, you will enjoy it, however, it does have it's rough edges here and there.