Blackwind | PS4 Review

Not a whole lot sounds less fun than being trapped on a hostile alien world, stuck inside of a metal coffin with no way out. Even if that metal coffin is a sweet ass, high-tech battle mech. James Hawkins is an unfortunate teenaged boy stuck in just such a situation. Blackwind sees you playing as him in a mostly isometric viewpoint as you explore the hostile alien homeworld of the Raknos. These violent foes will stop at nothing to kill every human they see, as evidenced by their war with the military already present trying to make a human home on this planet. It’s up to James to get to his missing Father before that happens.

Sci-Fi By the Numbers

It’s an incredibly simple setup, but you can tell that was the intent of it. It plays its narrative incredibly safe throughout, and even the plot twist is seen from a million miles away. Despite this, however, there’s a fair bit of charm to be experienced. The story itself is laden with tropes, but James is a genuine breath of fresh air when it comes to video game protagonists. He’s a youngster trapped in a situation far above his weight, but you feel his age throughout. Whether it’s the intentionally bad tough guy one-liners he throws out during combat, or the way he attempts to deepen his voice when speaking to an adult, there’s a certain flavor of protagonist here you don’t see elsewhere.

The commanding officers take advantage of James’ naivitae and his one-of-a-kind battle suit to have him complete dangerous missions. These mostly take place within labyrinthine military facilities of various sorts, though there are plenty of levels on the surface of the planet as well. The way you’re constantly thrown between the more open surface areas and linear military facilities really conjures to mind the hub-and-spoke system of world design.

It’s Dangerous to Go Alone

It’s even replicated with the progression inside of these facilities, which operate much like the dungeons of other games of this sort. There are puzzles in each, utilizing your various abilities and power-ups in interesting ways. Blackwind smartly paces these ability rollouts to provide a fresh way to do things every hour or so. It provided a lot of joy to see what my next unlock would be and how it would play into the puzzles.

Despite a twin-stick shooting control scheme and viewpoint, that genre description only scratches the surface of combat in Blackwind. There’s melee combos and finishing moves, both of which provide a sense of satisfaction when pulled off correctly. Several special skills, such as slowing down time, help keep things fresh during the 10-12 hour campaign. That’s not to say the combat is perfect by any means, however.

Misery, Misery, Misery, That’s What You’ve Chosen

As fun as the intermixing of abilities is, nothing can stop the frustration of being stun locked. There were more than a handful of times where a certain combination of enemies (and in the case of the giant mech foe, just them on their own) that’ll knock James on the ground. Before you have the chance to get up, another attack with a knockdown effect can hit you and repeat the animation. So you’re just stuck there either taking a significant amount of damage or outright dying with no recourse. It’s not fun, and it’s been such a long time since I’ve seen something like this in a game, I forgot there were days where this sort of frustration occurred more regularly.

Even still, it happened infrequently enough that it doesn’t color the entire combat experience. I had plenty of times where I was having a lot of fun. Mixing and matching the various battle mech upgrades is a lot of fun when things are clicking. Despite the borderline useless skill tree, powering up slowly through the adventure with those more standard upgrades is a lot of fun.

Unfortunately, Blackwind has quite a few quality-related issues. It’s always difficult to be critical of a smaller title, but I have to share my honest experience. The voice acting is pretty mediocre for every character that isn’t our lead. That’s not too bothersome, but the framerate drops and bugs are. Now I’m no stickler about low frame counts, but the forest area of Blackwind straight up gave me a headache. The game often drops, but this particular area is so poorly optimized it should come with some sort of warning. It made combat infinitely more difficult, and made the light platforming far more imprecise. The game crashed on my PS4 Pro a few times, and button prompts to progress would occasionally not react at all, forcing a checkpoint reload. The reloading is whatever, but that many crashes is worth noting. And the most cardinal of sins happened to me: a glitched trophy.

A New Way to Look at Things

Honestly, it’s almost worth playing through all of those shortcomings for the big twist. Though the plot itself remains mind numbingly obvious, the way this twist transforms the last third of the game is nothing short of incredible. It changes the enemies, environments, and even the combat music. It makes the finale shockingly different from what came before, and it’s impressive as hell to see.

Blackwind could make for a fun weekend game. If you can look past the technical shortcomings, it’s easy to get lost in the rhythm of combat, platforming, and puzzling. Hub-and-spoke worlds are always a ton of fun to explore, and that remains true here. If you’re looking for something new to play, and can stomach the occasional frustration, you could do a lot worse than this.

To hear me talk more about Blackwind, be sure to listen to Episode 381 of The Gaming Outsider Podcast.

This review is based on a PS4 copy of Blackwind provided by Stride PR for coverage purposes. It is also available on Xbox, Nintendo Switch, Mac, and PC via Steam and GOG.