Quickie Reviews’ is a super quick run down of a game I don’t have time to dedicate a full review to. That doesn’t mean I won’t come back to it later and drop a full ramble. Basically, if you want a review but don’t want to read 20 paragraphs, then these are for you!
Do you like a stiff breeze flapping your man-satchel like a flag? Do you like short men with beards? Are you prone to red hats, captured princesses and smelly socks? Well do I have the game for you! Or I would have, if it wasn’t quite so crappy.
Geki Yaba is a game where you play as a pantless gnome, presumably called Geki Yaba(?). Geki is fond of running around like a loon and nabbing peoples old socks, whilst deftly avoiding death pits, spikes and sheer surfaces. It’s a 2D Runner Platformer, similar to many Android/IOS titles, although one would argue Geki Yaba is probably not fit to stand toe-to-toe with even the lowest band of that bunch.
You will be running through various stages at the behest of the Great Gnome King. What truly baffled me though, was that none of these stages were remotely interesting. Hazards, obstacles and platforming remained fairly consistent throughout, but nothing struck me as being particularly well done. Levels are short and range from painfully easy, to infuriatingly difficult.
Difficulty is fine by me, I love a good challenge, but Geki Yaba is difficult not just because the level design. No, Geki Yaba is plagued by input delay. In a game with only one button, they could not nail jumping. At all. You will die countless times because your jump was not registered, your glider did not deploy when you wanted it to, or you used your glider at the wrong time. That last one queues up a jump that propels you to your death the moment your feet touch the ground, which is far from fun. I found almost no enjoyment from any of the levels in Geki Yaba based on this factor alone.
Not that the naff controls are the games only issue. Unpolished is probably a term that could be applied to the entirety of the experience. It’s graphically uninspired with wonky hitboxes. The music is basic and perforates your ear drums like nothing I have experienced in my adult life. The sound effects are low budget and borderline amateur. I could go on, but there is so much ‘not quite right’ about this game, I would have to remove the ‘Quickie’ from the title.
The final nail in the coffin is content, or lack thereof. Sure there is a fair few levels to torture yourself over, but once you finish them, there is nothing. No additional modes, no funky multiplayer. You are just done. When your core game is this ‘meh’, they could have at least given me some incentive to come back. But no, there is only this and the crushing sadness brought on by your poor financial investments.
Geki Yaba sucks. Even as a budget title, this game is not worth giving a second thought. Heck, as of writing this review, the game is free and even then, and I still wouldn’t recommend you waste your time with it. If the game was updated in such a way that fixed the input delay, then you could argue this might be a passable experience. In its current form? Avoid it at all costs.
Let me know in the comments below if you agree with my thoughts on this train wreck.
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