Intermission: Overgrowth

Apparently, the Lugaru team are making Overgrowth, the sequel to Lugaru, the game that I'm forced to play in my own personal hell 24/7.

Having finished Lugaru only by cheating, I have to say that there are a few problems they should probably iron out. So let's go through them with the biggest problem first;

#1: For the love of god, make the wolves less powerful

I understand that I'm a rabbit and they're wolves, but it's just ridiculous. One smack from a wolf can take you down regardless of your health, and they always, always use that goddamn annoying trip up attack, so you spend 3/4ths of the combat with your face planted in the ground.

Their attacks are lightning fast, so half the time you won't be able to counter attack the insta-kill hit and you can't sneak up on them either to perform your backstab attack because A) your sneaking speed is about as fast as their walking, so good luck catching up to them and B) they can smell you, so you can't get behind them anyway.

I'd love to find out who playtested this game so I can hang the stupid bastard.

#2: Stop disarming me every time I pick a weapon up

It doesn't matter what weapon I pick up, it's going to get taken off me. The sword is the worst of all - it doesn't matter how many times I do it, every single attack I make with the stupid thing gets countered and taken off me. The funny thing is, I can usually counter the guy back, so it's like a backing and forthing of counters and weapon disarms until eventually I just drop the bloody thing so one of us can die.

The dagger has a chance to go flying off you whenever you trip up (so against wolves you can kiss it goodbye) and the Bo staff can easily be blocked and countered because it's the slowest weapon in the game, so you'd better get used to fighting with your bare fists.

But... but you can holster your weapon so it won't be disarmed.

Well you're not using it then, are you? Not even another computer is quick enough to attack, holster and attack again to make sure it isn't disarmed (especially not against wolves), so a human certainly won't be.

#3: Let me explore the world

Even though there's this big pretty world to explore with randomly generated terrain, you don't get to see any of it. It's tragic because the rolling hills or the arctic tundra or the sweltering desert has the potential to go on literally forever because of the clever way Lugaru handles the terrain.

So, would it not make sense to let me explore rather than fight all the time? You've got a great world here guys, but it might as well not be there. You might as well have the game take place in a series of boxes.

#4: Make multiple enemies easier to handle

In Lugaru, if you had multiple enemies on you at the same time, they attacked you all at the same time, which meant even if you managed to counter one, you couldn't counter the other. This means that if you want to get through the level, you've got to take only one at a time.

Games like Assassin's Creed and Batman: Arkham Asylum handle a lot of enemies well, by making them all crowd around you (but not too close) and having one, maybe a maximum of two come at you at any one time.

I don't know whether the Lugaru team even thought of that or whether they deemed that style of play "too easy", but Lugaru doesn't handle it's combat like that (as you can tell by reading the last few posts).

Well, there's a reason games like that handled the fighting that particular way. Imagine if you were playing Assassin's Creed and all the guards came at you at once, swinging their weapons against your robed assassin body at the same time. You'd be ribbonified before you could even say Rage Quit.

#5: Slow things the f*&% down

The Lugaru team must have played a lot of Sonic in their youth, because the protagonist (and everyone else) moves blindingly fast.

They also attack really fast (I should stop bringing this point up because it's starting to sound like a broken record) and countering them requires a hair trigger shift key and lightning reflexes.

The only thing they're allowed to speed up is your crouch speed. It takes forever to get in range of the enemy's jugular and there's a good chance you'll be outed before you get there.

#6: Give me a better ending

I'm going to give away a spoiler here, so if you desperately wanted to play the game than avoid all the text within the [SPOILER] tags.

[SPOILER]At the very end of Lugaru, main character goes back to the rabbit fortress (which you never get to see properly) and essentially says "I'll travel the world to find myself".[/SPOILER]

Awesome, I thought, I get to finally explore. But no, it just reset my map to the start of the game which infuriated me to no end.

So not only did you give me a stupid ending, but you didn't even give me the chance to go back and redo all the levels I wanted to do again, or give me the open world option. It's just an enormous middle finger to the player.

Come to think of it,

#7: Give me a better character

"Main character" (because I can't remember his name) came across as worryingly naive in the first part of the game. Later on, he lost all emotion because his wife and child and whole village was brutally slaughtered.

They need a better dialog writer, too. He, and every other character he meets, comes across as wooden, like they're all marionettes.

Oh my god. That's it. They are all marionettes, aren't they? That's why they get ragdoll'd so easily - because whenever a wolf trips me up my manipulator accidentally slips up due to sweaty hands.

#8: Make it more of an RPG

In the first level of the game you can talk to people. All they need to do is implement a quest system and they're away laughing.

Also, give me stats and use challanges to let the player improve not only his style but also his stats.

For example, smacking people around will increase strength, meaning more damage dealt. Getting hit a lot increases stamina, making the character more resiliant to damage. Running a lot improves speed. Countering a lot improves countering speed. Throwing your dagger a lot increases dagger speed and at the max level the dagger will curve to find their enemies, although you might want to make it so it won't act like a homing missile.

It sounds like a bit of a grind but players will still do it, because they'll want to give themselves the best possible advantage over their enemies.


In conclusion Lugaru, while a bad game (in my eyes anyway), has the potential to be a good game. Indeed, fixing all the issues won't make it the perfect game an there are a few more to take into account, but it will be a definate step in the right direction.

But if Overgrowth is just another Lugaru I'm going to be dissapointed. Angry, yes, but that'll pass in time; the dissapointment probably won't.

Because Lugaru had - and still has - potential as an open world RPG or even just an exploring game, but it made exploring the world a waste of time and doesn't have any RPG elements. It's just an extremely hard third person fighting game.