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Review:

Enemies are a threat in your typical Metroid game, but not for long. The first time through a new area, players are likely to be cautious; perhaps even fearful. By the third or fourth time through that same room, Samus will have grown so powerful that popping enemies is as challenging and meaningful as popping bubble wrap. Slamming a fist down on bubble wrap that was once a scary threat? Now that’s satisfying. Shadow of the Colossus does not fill its vast landscape with trivial monsters. It is a series of boss fights, where each boss is a world unto itself, to be studied, climbed, and attacked.

The Aquatic Adventure of the Last Human wants so badly to combine the two, but it’s confused about which half of the mermaid is supposed to be a fish.

There’s no challenge, no satisfaction in moving through its oversized, vacant labyrinth. Boss fights are messy, twitchy shootouts that consistently overstay their welcome.

Players control a submarine, which scoots freely through the sidescrolling world. You can forget about the “how do I get up there?” puzzles that defined Metroid and Colossus. You can forget the appeal and depth of those games, altogether.

+ Looks good! (Mostly.) + Intuitive controls. + It's always nice to acquire a power-up. + Good message about the danger of global warming and the other ways we will destroy ourselves.

– A huge, maze-like, non-linear world...and most of it is empty? Are you kidding? – Weird visual problems. The slightly-off tiled background is a constant distraction. The submarine is a flat gray, without any shadows, and its pixels are a totally different scale from the rest of the game. Background and foreground can be hard to distinguish. – I'm hesitant to ding the game too harshly for this. I haven't tested any other controllers, so maybe this problem is unique to my weird hardware, but since I can only speak to my own experience: Yo, this is the worst rumble issue I have ever found in a game. The controller vibrates when you'd expect—getting hit, firing a harpoon, etc.—but then it keeps going for five seconds. That is a long time to shake at maximum power just for taking one shot. – Most bosses are faster than you and shoot projectiles without warning, so getting in their faces doesn't work. Taking opportunistic shots from a afar, and retreating further to recover health is a reliable way to whittle them down, but they set an instant-death trap that blends into the background, and there's another five minutes down the drain.

🧡🧡🤍🤍🤍 Bottom Line: Points for effort, but that's all. The Aquatic Adventure of the Last Human is a shallow game (sorry) that fundamentally misunderstands everything that inspired it.

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