Storm Review

Not worth chasing.

Every time I pick Storm up, its fresh physics puzzler ideas and sharp terrain design make me think that this particular session will be more enjoyable than the last. Before long, however, I’m thrown back into the frustrating and often rage-inducing dungheap of mishap after mishap, and reminded of why I put it down. There were times when I was struck by how pretty it is, only to be jolted by a series of graphical errors. I was impressed by an interesting mechanic, only to see it mutilated as I progressed. I enjoyed the fun, mind-bending challenge of one level, only to watch it followed by one that's broken or simply dull.

Storm’s unique premise has us controlling a variety of clunky weather-based superpowers that must be used to navigate a seed through often poorly designed two-dimensional levels. It takes place over
a period of four seasons, each of which introduces a new mechanic – most initially impressed me, but that impression soon turned to horror at how they were handled. The Wind ability, for instance, allows you to draw a line to designate which direction the seed should be blown. Unfortunately, while this creates the illusion of control, in reality the wind will only blow one of two directions: left or right. If you want to specify more precisely, well, you’re out of luck. Often I wanted to direct my seed over the top of a nearby cliff face, but instead the breeze took it careening forcefully down into the chasm below. The central goal in every level of Storm is to take your seed to a particular location, but in half of the cases this location is difficult to discern, and often placed in such a way that I was surprised when I reached a checkpoint that I didn’t know I was trying to reach. Storm obviously has very specific methods it expects the player to use to finish each level, but is consistently unclear as to what these methods are. The usual result of this was me using strange combinations of my three elemental abilities and wondering what exactly I was expected to accomplish.

While there are several genuinely puzzling, enjoyable levels, they are counteracted by the more frequent appearance of those in which I feel utterly lost. Most left me feeling unsatisfied and disappointed knowing I hadn’t completed them in the way that I was expected to. In Storm, many of the new mechanics that are introduced are fun to experiment with, but these are the mechanics that are quickly shoved aside and never seen again.
Storm’s presentation is hit or miss as well. The menus are difficult to navigate on the PC, requiring you to flip-flop between the mouse and the arrow keys. Certain staples of the gameplay also require using the mouse and the arrow keys in conjunction, and create many a frustrating experience when I knew how to solve the puzzle at hand but wasn’t able to because I can’t reach the mouse fast enough to guide my seed off of a precarious ledge. Storm also has a strange habit of showing its hint screen between every level, despite the fact that often there are no hints to display, so it just puts up an awkwardly blank screen.

There are no in-game options to speak of, so there’s no way to change the graphics or key bindings. However, on the graphics side, I was largely impressed by Storm. Neat visual effects like the raindrops splashing on my screen, beautiful foregrounds and backgrounds in each of the seasons, and a dynamic environment that changes as you use elements all make Storm an aesthetically pleasing game. However, when added to the myriad of glitches and the uninspired music, they seem nullified.