- I paid: £2.99 (Bundle price, normal price: 12.99)
- I expect: 20-30 hours of play
- I rate it: 87/100 if you have others to play it with or 37/100 if you are buying alone
- Story-driven: no
- Demo available: no
- Worth the money only if you have others to play with or if you get it in a bundle, otherwise don't bother
"The Flock is a fresh breath of life into the arena of first person multiplayer gaming. Sadly, its lack of a player base means that you are wasting your money unless you buy it with a group of others. I am one from the latter criterion, and I have loved every minute of the game; I simply wish more people played."
Did you ever play the game statues when you were a child?
I did. It was one of those playground games that were only possible as children
because you could be anyone’s friend by simply asking them and you could easily
form a group to play with. The Flock is essentially a spooky version of that
exact game with a few added mechanics. I will talk about the looks, sounds and
gameplay before I say anything about the netplay. This is an indie title that
attempts to be a lobby multiplayer and I shall leave the netplay until the end on
purpose such that it does not colour the whole review.
The game looks so-so. If you look at any screenshot, you
might think that the fancy glows and filters make for an appealing package.
Take a look at this screenshot, for example.
That’s taken straight from in-game without any
post-processing so the game clearly has the potential to look beautiful.
Unfortunately, most of the time you are not looking at artily placed statues
and camera angles that are dripping with edginess; instead you spend a lot of
the game looking at textures which are mediocre and the hands of your character
which look – for want of a better description – like two mutated tuna fish.
Either that or a little gun which smacks of Portal
reject that has a texture looking neither like smooth plastic nor rugged
gun metal.
The particle effects are unimpressive at best but at worst
actually obscure your sense of direction. One of the best ways to figure out
where you need to go is to look for the column of light in the sky so having
that column almost completely obscured by smoke and cloud in some instances is
questionable design.
Oh, and there's this clipping glitch.
It doesn't affect gameplay and you have to look for it but it's sloppy.
The sound for this game is fantastic. There is little to no
music due to the fact that it is inherently a horror game therefore it is riding
on the ambient noise a lot of the time. What little of it there is has this
beautiful Diablo feel about it that
sends me right back to when I was 15 and trying to play hardcore characters,
listening to the rogue encampment music over and over. The ambient sounds mimic
footsteps and other things that a flock does thereby tricking you into thinking
there are spooky things coming to get you when there may actually be nothing
there at all. The sound effects themselves are fine. I didn’t have any
particular thoughts either way but I am sure a lot of work went into making the
cry of the flock sound as it does without it falling flat or making you cringe.
It is however a merciful thing that the game plays a sound effect if you are
standing in the beam of light. Without this, there would surely be many
frustrating deaths from simply not knowing where the cone of light ended and
began.
As I mentioned in the introduction, the greatest part of
gameplay is simply the playground game of statues. One person is the carrier (of
the light artefact) and must achieve objectives in order to “ascend” and escape
the living hell that is being one of the flock. The rest of the flock chase the
carrier and try to kill them thus taking the artefact for themselves and
becoming the new carrier. The carrier can shine light upon the flock in order
to burn them away and thereby achieve the objective. The flock can stand still
to become “petrified” and immune to the beam of light. They can also drop a
decoy statue with which they can exchange places. Flock can call out to one
another which identifies their location (to other flock) and attacks the
carrier with a scary screen effect, hopefully spooking them into turning around
the wrong way.
In order to prevent the carrier from being able to destroy
flock too easily, the light artefact has a limited battery that recharges by
running around. This means that even in situations where the carrier knows
exactly where the flock are hiding they will become vulnerable at some point, allowing
for counter-play from hidden flock. Flock are also significantly more agile
than the carrier and are capable of jumping up and over objects to attack from
above. Jumping from roof to roof has a satisfying feeling about it, but the
camera moves around in a drunken fashion that is strange and disorienting until
you have gotten used to it.
The objectives are clearly defined and require the carrier
to point its artefact at it for a small amount of time. This means that flock
can set up decoys near objectives and fool or ambush a wary carrier forced to
either become partially vulnerable while capturing the objective or flee.
Finally, the part which makes or breaks any game so daring
to attempt to be a lobby multiplayer: the netplay. The lobby system is well
designed, allowing you to smoothly drop into sessions with your friends or to
just click a button and find some other players. The voting system is simple
and easy and leads to an expedient start to your game session. When in game,
the effects of latency can at times be quite pronounced:- characters will
stutter around the screen as they move along their path. This is not the worst
latency-produced effect that I have ever seen; the characters are not rubber
banding around and you do not get killed out of nowhere for what seems like no
reason. It is difficult to say if there is much effect on the clutch moments
but it would be ignorant to assume that there isn’t a bit of unfair loss on
behalf of lag.
All of these positives and negatives are irrelevant with
regards to the biggest nail in the coffin of The Flock: there is almost no
player base. While it is neat and interesting that the developers think that
having a limited number of deaths (200+ million) adds intrigue, it is a moot
point when there is nobody playing the game to trigger those deaths. A lot of
time can be spent searching for people to play with and unless you already have
a group of people (check out the steam group http://steamcommunity.com/groups/flocktogether# ) this adds up to hours of wasted time. Since the game has no
single player mode, it makes this the most damning reason for the game’s
eventual failure. As it is, you must organise groups to play with on your own
ahead of time or else waste your money on a game that you will never play
because you can’t.
And finally, I will speak about the limited lives gimmick. The general opinion seems to be that having a game which 'ends' after you have paid real money for it is a terrible idea. I don't think this is really the case; if you play a game with an active enough community for long enough that limited lives actually becomes a concern, then can you really be unhappy with it? If I get 30 hours out of this game, I will be happy if it ends or not. The campaign that the devs have promised after the game's end is an added bonus and is one that I hope turns out to be impressive.
And finally, I will speak about the limited lives gimmick. The general opinion seems to be that having a game which 'ends' after you have paid real money for it is a terrible idea. I don't think this is really the case; if you play a game with an active enough community for long enough that limited lives actually becomes a concern, then can you really be unhappy with it? If I get 30 hours out of this game, I will be happy if it ends or not. The campaign that the devs have promised after the game's end is an added bonus and is one that I hope turns out to be impressive.