MFGG - Mario Fan Games Galaxy

Review Information

Game Reviewed	Somari 2, by Ryan Silberman
Review Author	Vitiman
Created	Dec 27 2015, 11:33 PM

General Commentary and Game Overview

How does one follow up the Hummer Team "classic" Somari? It's such an anomaly of common sense: take two of the most well known video game characters at the time, smash them together on very recently outdated hardware, and... basically make it a poorly programmed port (or a PPP) of the first Sonic but with a really athletic Mario in place of the blue blur.

With that little history lesson out of the way, Jack-of-All Games has decided he was ready and willing to take up the challenge of following up this perverse piffle of piracy (also a PPP). Almost 3 years in the making, how does Somari 2 fare against its predecessor? More interestingly, how does it fare against some other fangames being made nowadays? Well, let's dive in and hope for the best (but rest assured, I've played it already, expect the worst)

Pros	Delightfully quirky concept; ambitious, almost You can skip levels if you really wish to Soundtrack is surprisingly sweet!
Cons	Horrible graphics Cannot play in windowed mode / forced full screen Engine is confusingly wonky Turning Somari into a unique character Poorly drawn levels (see below) All around lack of effort

Impressions

Gameplay 4 / 10	Let me get something entirely straight here: this game isn't fun to play. Not even in the slightest. It's an amusing curiosity at best, and I want to preface the rest of this review with the following note: you can skip the levels. I discovered this completely by accident, since it seems to be assigned to the Shift key (which you would normally assume could be jump), and I almost thought I broke the game. But nope, further investigation proved otherwise. Why have a "Skip Level" feature that's so blatantly unmarked? To keep things interesting, I deliberately ignored the entire folder's worth of reading material, because let's face it: ain't nobody got time for that! (a quick skim-through proved it was mostly harmless - just an imitation of older game manuals of yesteryear, although very poorly drawn). The engine seems to be a premade one, a very specific one titled the "Revival Engine" of which I'm presuming is a Sonic Game Maker engine. Makes sense, right? It is, after all, a sequel to a game that is a bizarre mashup of Sonic and Mario, so this seems like a fitting choice. The problem with this? The engine just isn't very well made. I'm not entirely sure if Jack mucked with the code any or if it really does feel like this from the get-go, but a LOT of the time you're fighting gravity to make proper jumps. The level design doesn't help this little tidbit of annoyance one bit, since he seems to have intentionally designed these levels specifically to throw off anyone who's actually played a classic Sonic game. Let me explain why fighting gravity is a bad thing: in a typical video game with slope physics, gravity is pulling DOWNWARD, effectively imitating real life. Here, gravity pulls in whichever direction the slope is facing, making jumps unnecessarily hard to make and leaving you helpless should you choose to do anything but spindash your way through the level. Ooh, that reminds me! The spindash seems to just not work sometimes. I used it a handful of times, and every single time I tried to hit an enemy with it, it failed. I'm not sure if I had extraordinary bad luck or if you genuinely can't use the spindash as an attack, but all things considered it's a glaring flaw and messes with your muscle memory quite a bit (as well as, as I noted above, your memory of playing an actual Sonic game). To cap this one off, the enemies are functional, but just barely; often, I found myself trying desperately to run away from enemies rather than destroy them. This might be a product of how some baddies like to shoot projectiles: all over the place. If there's any consistency at all, I didn't see it. Not fun, case closed.
Graphics 2 / 10	Great Dionysus, this art is mediocre. Not even in a particularly appealing kind of "sloppy", it's just straight-up low effort. MS Paint was obviously the tool of choice going by the palette and lineart, and I'd like to pay special attention to the HUD: barely readable. This is no doubt because of the way they're poorly shadowed, which gives off a very unsatisfying "triple line" effect that hurts to look at. On a side note, Somari is an entirely different colourscheme, which is deliberate on Jack's part. But... why, though? Was this an attempt to give him an identity of his own? He already had one! It was a weird combination of Mario and Sonic, what more can you do to the poor bloke before it becomes illegal? Or at the very least, in very poor taste. How about those enemy designs? Well, to be kind... they leave a lot to be desired. Some enemies look fairly complex (but still lousy), and some just look like last minute creations to meet some kind of deadline. The game's been in development since 2013, perhaps this isn't that far from the truth? Overall, there's not much else I can say. It's so awful it actually kind of hurts to look at. Oh, and the game also force opens in full screen and there doesn't appear to be any option to turn this off. Have fun!
Sound 6 / 10	I can't say too much here, the sound FX were okay and the music itself was actually fairly enjoyable! Obviously grabbed from other sources (some action-y NES games, in particular), but still a cool soundtrack. Unfortunately, it doesn't really fit the gameplay very well, so it isn't perfect.
Replay 1 / 10	None. Nonexistent. It's good for a laugh, but I'm absolutely not coming back to this one in the future. I could have skipped further along to the later levels, but this was such a taxing experience as-is.

Final Words

When a game makes the "Skip Level" button the Shift key, which one would typically press to see if it's the jump button, you know something's not going to be pleasant.

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Comments

	TheTwelfthRocket Mar 24 2016, 9:19 PM
Quote (Review) Obviously grabbed from other sources (some action-y NES games, in particular) The person who actually made the music was Kevvviiinnn... Of course that proof comes from the manual, and it seems that almost no one would spend time reading the MANUAL... also commenting on an old submission ftw


	Vitiman Mar 26 2016, 2:30 PM
Well, colour me surprised! Perhaps I should have read through more than just the story and concept fluffing, go fig. Either way, I'm surprised the game has a dedicated soundtrack at all. I'm gonna go ahead and go out on a limb and assume that it wasn't made /for/ Somari 2, but rather probably just for something else - it would handily explain why none of the music fits in the game.

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