Blackwind review: An action-slasher that fails to live up to its promise

I like some games because, well, they're simple to play, which to an extent, Blackwind is. Modern gaming has completely changed the nature of the title from its earlier days. Most video games today that are story-based have multiple endings and more complexities. The onus for such games is to recreate choice, just like we do in real life.

Blackwind goes on a different path from that. There is a definite focus on the story not to mislead any of you since it's a single-player game. There's also the setting of a person in mech armor killing hundreds of enemies. All these are likable elements of the game, and in several aspects, Blackwind holds its head high among indie games.

But there are also issues and certain glaring ones that I didn't like. Many of these issues were not a result of poor optimization or lousy coding. It's more about how the game was designed in the general sense, where I felt that it could have done significantly better.

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Blackwind: A tale of promise let down by poor execution

I will start straight away with the game design because that's one of the biggest strengths of the gameplay. Now I won't include game design without the story in itself. Players will be playing as young James Hawkins, who finds himself trapped in an advanced mech in the alien world of Medusa-42.

Story

So the mech armor James is trapped in has been made by his father, who is a famous professor. Unfortunately, their flight was shot down by unknown entities, which resulted in Jimmy's father allowing the prototype armor as a safety case for Jimmy.

The Story of Blackwind revolves around Jimmy (Image via Blowfish Studios)

Jimmy's primary focus is to find out where his father's vehicle crashed and what has happened to him. While the story is promising, I felt that it was extremely bland. The plot was highly predictable, and there was never that oomph factor that I was looking for. Sadly, the story was a letdown, and given that it's a core part of the game, it's a big negative.

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Gameplay and World Design

World design is genuinely one point as the way the world has been generated is praiseworthy. There's an ample number of puzzles to solve, which don't take up much time. There is enough variance in the enemies to keep a player engrossed, and much of the parts of the world go well with the lore and the designs of the enemies and main character.

Blackwind is a top-down angled game with a fixed camera, which for me was a bummer. While I didn't have any problems due to the camera angle, a bit more flexibility would have been welcome.

The prototype armor features both guns and swords, which is another positive. Sadly, the guns felt underwhelming to me until they were leveled up. Now, this could have been how the developers intended it to happen. There are also slow-mo kills that can be executed quickly. After some time, I started feeling irritated by how long the slow-mo kills were taking to complete.

The same problem also sometimes happens when it is caused by explosives. By the time I could get back up, another one hit me. But the biggest concern in this area was when enemies were hitting me with rounds that knocked me back. A sequence of those resulted in a moment I would instead want to forget. Avoiding it was landing an extremely high-skilled dodge, which is quite impossible to execute.

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Positives

Not everything in Blackwind is terrible, but they do get burdened under the game's many issues. I am sold on the skill system that allowed me to make my mech armor according to my liking.

The core game play of the game is definitely fun (Image via Blackwind)

Blackwind, for a large part, feels like those games I played as a child. Those games had okay-ish stories and janky controls where I never cared about any other aspects but just killed whatever I could. If you want to play Blackwind in that way, it's a lot of fun. I truly feel that there's promise in this game, especially when I miss the twin-stick shooters.

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Verdict

Blackwind's selection of the backdrop and plot is correct, but the way it executes is poor. The game feels too linear for its sound, and the story is barebones and predictable. While progression in the first few hours felt on point, the next few felt like a stretch for me. So many things, like the slow-mo kills, could have been done better.

Review score card (Image via Sportskeeda)

Blackwind will go down as a promising indie title that could have done so much more. There are truly those moments of incredible fun that a gamer seeks in every game. But the overall burden created by the negative aspects is too much to ignore.

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Blackwind

Reviewed on: Xbox Series S (Review code provided by Blowfish Studios)

Platforms: PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, and PC

Developer: Drakkar Dev

Publisher: Blowfish Studios and Gamera Game

Release Date: January 20, 2022