Ebenezer and the Invisible World Evaluate (PS4)

Ebenezer and the Invisible World is a 2D Metroidvania-style platformer based mostly on A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. You discover London as Ebenezer Scrooge, on a quest to return the commercial capitalist, Casper Malthus, to his good-natured self after a go to from the Ghosts of Christmas seem to have corrupted him.

In related fashion to Hole Knight and Blasphemous, you’ll be platforming via varied environments, defeating enemies, and finishing varied fetch quests for NPCs. The platforming right here is sadly not very satisfying because of imprecise and unresponsive controls. We frequently fell from platforms to our demise when the sport didn’t register a press of the X button to leap, or acquired shocked by an enemy mid-jump, inflicting us to reset to one of many few and much between save factors, dropping our progress.

The fight is equally irritating, feeling sluggish and clunky. Enemies really feel very restricted with just one or two strikes, and would not be such a menace if it weren’t for the unforgiving hit containers. They do not line up with the visuals, inflicting you to take surprising hits and battle to land assaults. The ghostly talents Ebenezer can unlock and utilise do redeem the fight barely with some enjoyably chaotic powers — fireballs, ball and chain, and harpoon throws to call just a few.

The sport’s presentation is palms down the most effective a part of it, with gorgeously detailed hand-drawn environments and animations that convey Christmassy pleasure and heat. Sadly, that is overshadowed by the dearth of principal route steering and the quite a few bugs and glitches current all through. Quests do not advance when accomplished, leaving the sport smooth locked; crashes trigger you to lose unsaved progress; field puzzles do not operate as supposed, inflicting you to get caught on the atmosphere; textual content disappears, inflicting you to overlook key story factors, and the listing goes on and on. We could not full the sport, solely managing to make it a few hours in earlier than having to restart solely a number of occasions for the reason that principal questline failed to maneuver to the following step.

Comfortable locks, crashes, and bugs burden this gorgeously offered Christmas story. Till this nightmare earlier than Christmas is patched, we might recommend discovering one thing else to put below your Christmas tree.