Official Review PlayStation Vita

Review cover Metrico (PlayStation Vita)
Official GBAtemp Review

Product Information:

  • Release Date (NA): August 5, 2014
  • Publisher: Digital Dreams Games
  • Developer: Digital Dreams Games
  • Genres: Puzzle

Game Features:

Single player
Local Multiplayer
Online Multiplayer
Co-operative
Metrico is a minimialist-type puzzle game developed and published by Digital Dreams Games released on August 5th for the Vita. Metrico takes advantage of many of the Vita's hardware features in order to bring a full gameplay experience.

Normally with my reviews, I included various “sections” that I write an overview of, however Metrico is a bit different so I'm just going to keep it all in one long post.

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Metrico isn't your average puzzle game; as you move through the environment, various objects are effected in some sort of way by each movement. An example, if you jump, a tower blocking your path may shrink or extend. At the end of each level, you're also given a “choice” to go into 2 sets of doors, one of the left and on the right. Each end level has it's own pie chart showing the percentage of which door was chosen. This is all well and good, and it starts out pretty simple, but as you continue the game introduces tons of control modifiers that can overwhelm players. Tapping the touchscreen shoots a ball of energy that activates various platforms, using the back touchpad to aim your balls of energy, using the camera to detect various colors that will help you continue on with the game, etc etc. 

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Unfortunately, some of these unique control methods are quite flawed. As you play Metrico, you will reach a point where you are required to use the Vita's camera to continue on with the game. Using the camera, you need to find an object of a certain color (green, blue, or red) in order to get passed various obstacles. While this is a unique and interesting way to continue on with the game, this then requires gamers to find and have constant access to these various colors. Those playing at home may not have any issues with this (I just used my laptop and MS Paint for each color), players on the go may struggle when reaching these parts of the game. 

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Metrico also faces a plethora of glitches that can impede progress as well. During some of the later levels I was constantly killed for no reason, and some of the puzzles didn't respond to any of the control methods provided. I had to continually close out and restart the game in order to get it to work properly, and this on it's own frustrated me to the point where I gave up on the game for some hours. Along with these glitches, I've faced tons of framerate drops throughout the game, which is inexcusable for a game with the simplistic graphical style that Metrico uses. I can only assume Metrico was poorly coded/optimized, and I hope the devs will release a patch in the future to help fix all of these issues.

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Metrico has it's own unique style of environments, with various charts and shapes that populate the background paired with an atmospheric soundtrack that the game urges you to listen to on startup. Both of these are quite nice; the minimalistic-styled backgrounds are enjoyable to me and the audio gives off an excellent atmosphere for the art-style of Metrico, however the lackluster and flawed gameplay quickly turns the game into a frustrating experience that you just want to mute and get over with. 

 

Verdict

What We Liked ...
  • Great art style
  • Great Soundtrack
  • Attempts to use all of the Vita's features for controls
What We Didn't Like ...
  • Terrible execution control-wise
  • Framerate issues
  • Glitches that force you to close and reopen game
  • Glitches that kill you for no reason
  • Long load times for a simple game
4
Gameplay
Initially, the game starts out really well and is easy to get into, however the overwhelming control schemes that were poorly designed along with the aforementioned glitches really kill the experience
5
Presentation
Metrico is poorly presented altogether; the environments look beautiful and the audio really gives you an interesting feel, but the framerate drops and glitches will irritate even the most patient player.
7
Lasting Appeal
The game features a lot trophy-hunter content. Towards the end, I noticed that if you position some of the objects in the game in a precise way you unlock little “dots” that you can collect that will give you various trophies.
5
out of 10

Overall

Metrico looks like a great puzzle game and is unique on it's own, but the game was poorly executed by the developers and needs a lot more work before I would ever recommend the game to anyone.
  • Like
Reactions: Sicklyboy and T-hug
Arras
I got up to the movement controlled section which was just ugh. You basically have to turn the Vita completely upside down to move some of the platforms to the right places.
 
Dedale
Thanks. Really interesting review. I'm a Plus subscriber but didn't have the time to check this one out. I guess, Muramasa and Fez takes too much of my time.
I will wait for an update for this title then.
 
  • Like
Reactions: MegaBassBX
T-hug
I'm a bit upset how this game turned out. For me personally it ran very poorly and then when I had to tweet the devs a screencap of a level I was stuck on I just lost interest. The logic behind the puzzles didn't make sense to me and I think that hurt it a lot. I also found the music jarring most of the time. A real shame as the dev is a really great guy.
At least they will have a truck full of cash from Sony for it for it being a plus game, possibly more than it would have made otherwise.. maybe one day well actually know!
 
Tom Bombadildo
Arras, I had similar problems at first, especially with some of the later motion puzzles that required you to turn and rotate your Vita every which way to do things. Definitely a pain.

T-hug, I did get to a couple of areas that took me 15-20 minutes to figure out, but I think that was mostly because the controls were just poorly implemented.
 
Review cover
Product Information:
  • Release Date (NA): August 5, 2014
  • Publisher: Digital Dreams Games
  • Developer: Digital Dreams Games
  • Genres: Puzzle
Game Features:
Single player
Local Multiplayer
Online Multiplayer
Co-operative

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