Despite succumbing to a black hole and big monsters, the world does makes for a brilliant skate park.
You’ll grind on rails and tumble into dark chasms.
SOLAR ASH REI CRACKED
You’ll flip between cracked slabs like a supersonic trampolinist. They’re all designed with your rollerblades in mind too, with honking great drops that springboard you onto ruined skyscrapers. Solar Ash gets one thing so ridiculously right, and that’s feeling cool as heck when skating around its gorgeous environments. Easily my favourite is the grappling hook, because we love a grapple don’t we? Slap the right bumper and you’ll slingshot to floating rings with a delightful snap. Give the right trigger a pull and you’ll get this brief nitrous boost that’ll let you ramp off terrain with extra gusto. Squeeze the left trigger and you’ll transition from a gentle jog to a wonderful glide that picks up momentum as you stride forwards. I used a controller as it felt far more intuitive than mouse and keyboard. The real star of this game is the movement, which has you rollerblade around shattered worlds like a post apocalyptic gazelle on wheels. Let’s just say that by the end credits, I’d had my fill. Sure, interspersed throughout these areas are little side stories and collectible audio logs, yet they all boil down to finding or activating three, four or five things. The game barely deviates from this loop, which keeps things digestible, but ultimately becomes a bit samey. It’s a rigid structure that does more harm than good. That’s the rhythm of Solar Ash: scan each area for corrupted bits, clear corrupted bits to awaken the boss, defeat said boss, move onto another area, repeat. Only once you've cleared these out does their resident boss spring to life. Each area has a few corrupted spots which you can ping on your HUD with your scanner. It’s not just a case of hopping on the back of these Remnants, Shadow Of The Colossus-style, either.
Her reactions to the news you're bringing these monsters down only adds to the intrigue. Defeat a Remnant and you'll be whisked away to Echo's realm. Instead, you’ll need to beat one before you can unlock the next. You can’t tackle any Remnant you’d like from the outset. This isn’t structured like an open-world game, though. By doing so, your hope is to reactivate the Starseed and do away with the Ultra Dyson forever. And over the course of around five to six hours, you’ll travel to a handful of increasingly complex areas and clear them of Remnants whether you like it or not. While it’s nothing new, I liked how there’s a thick layer of unease underpinning everything you do. It does that Shadow Of The Colossus thing where downing these creatures doesn’t inspire jubilant celebration, but more of a guilty “Sorry, big fella”. Thing is, when you do go a-prodding, you don’t feel too good about it. How? By taking that blade of yours and poking their eyes out.
Towering monsters called Remnants have left this dark gloop splattered across the land and it's up to you to clear out this corruption. Turns out the Ultra Void isn’t “cracking” but “clogging”. So, it’s up to you to venture into the Ultra Void and see what’s cracking. But for some reason, the Starseed is no longer operational and the Ultra Void seems particularly sucky this time. Normally, you’d twist a knob on this big tower called the Starseed and hey presto, you’d rescue the planet from Suction Destruction. In Solar Ash, you play as space-skater Rei whose planet is being sucked into a massive black hole called the Ultra Void. One that excels when it lets you off the leash, only, that doesn’t happen as often as I’d have liked. So yes, it does retain something from its predecessor, and that’s the element of cool.
Solar Ash sees you flipping onto the backs of massive monsters and felling them like you’re performing athletic acupuncture. Except this time it’s not a top-down hack-and-slasher, but a stylish skate to save a civilisation on the brink of collapse. The folks over at Heart Machine have slid back into the fold with a game set in the same universe as their action-adventure debut Hyper Light Drifter. It's stylish and oh-so-smooth when it gets in the flow, but is hampered by repetition. An action-adventure that sees you topple big monsters with your rollerblades.
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