Freedom Planet and Waxing Nostalgic for the Genesis

After being engaged in a grueling staring contest with it as the game sat in my Steam library for months, I've finally gotten around to playing Freedom Planet. Its aesthetic had caught my eyes as it screamed 16-bit. The character designs, the environments, and the use of color all brought back a flood of memories from the heyday of the Sega Genesis. The game really does bare a resemblance Sonic the Hedgehog and it isn't just how it looks but to some extent how FP plays as well, as it does go for the "Gotta go fast!" mentality that is so prevalent from Sega's series. All the while, there's an element of exploration from trying to find all of the collectibles scattered around a level. Part of me kept thinking that I should be annoyed by this while playing the game because it does make for bit of a stilted experience from all the zipping around at full throttle, then slamming on the breaks to look for stuff. However, that just wasn't the case. The ambience of the game, combined with the platforming, and boss fights made me enjoy FP quite a bit and overlook that.

For someone who quite likes revisiting games of old and has a soft spot for the Genesis, FP really is something special. It can't be said enough how much the developers nailed the whole 16-bit Sega era in terms of visuals and animation here. The game looks like something straight out of 1994 or so when games on the Genesis were starting to look really good. There's a lot of detail without going overboard, smooth animation, and the color palette really pops off the screen.

The levels are actually really big. While there's a clock counting up from the start of each stage, I quickly began to ignore it. Exploration has always been a big thing to me, as I've mentioned before while playing Skyrim, so poking around and finding all of the things was far more of a priority than speed running the game to complete stages in as little time as possible. I'd go so far as to say that speed running the story mode levels on the first playthrough does FP a disservice. A lot of the fun comes from poking around trying to find everything, It brings back a lot of memories of playing Metroid and games of that ilk, just methodically checking every nook and cranny.

About the only area of the game that left me with mixed feelings was the voice acting. While it is very good, there's just so much of it. The cut scenes are very long in FP. They have a Saturday morning cartoon vibe to them, and do bring out the occasional chuckle, but they really do a number on the game's pacing. After downing the boss for a level, while I do like a bit of a break for advancing the story, a bit more brevity would have done wonders here. This is pretty much the one area where they game falters for me.

While the voice acting was a bit much, the music is amazing, and I can't get enough of it. The composer really nailed the feel of 16-bit platformer soundtracks. Thematically it's spot on, and the instrumentation does an interesting job of straddling itself between the bleepy bloopiness of the 90s and more current sounds. It's easily one of my favorite soundtracks to come along in the last few years.

With the huge wave of pseudo retro games to come out in recent years, there's just so much to choose from. Action games, RPGs, platformers, adventure games, you name it. Players have some hard choices to make when considering picking up a game of this ilk, but I'd definitely have to recommend Freedom Planet. It does so many things right when it comes to recapturing the feel of Genesis-era action platformers. If you like Sonic and have a soft spot for video games of the early 90s, you owe it to yourself to check this game out.