Review | Encodya (Switch) - Critical Error
Encodya is the neo-noir-adventure game that I have been waiting for and had been really excited to play. I was given a Nintendo Switch key, and unfortunately, this game had fallen flat for me in a number of ways. The opening cutscene had me excited -ready to embark on an adventure with the intriguing Tina and SAM, her robotic companion. Encodya takes place in a dark cyberpunk world, viewed from a 2.5D perspective, where you get to play both characters. I was really excited to see how these controls would affect the gameplay throughout my dystopian adventure but was disappointed to see that my adventure through the neon haze was cut short.
It should be no surprise Encodya started life as a animated short film, I mean just look at it!
I bet Agent 47 would know what to do with the canned food, after all he is an expired spaghetti expert.
Soon after I was introduced to the characters, I noticed that the loading screens were particularly long, the framerate could get unexpectedly choppy, and trying to manoeuver through menus was incredibly difficult. On top of these issues, I even experienced some crashes, where I had to restart the application after realising I was stuck in a loading screen. This was so disappointing to me, and it took away any real chance for me to immerse myself in the world of Encodya. I spent less time playing the game and more fighting with it and spent most of my time trying to get into Encodya instead.
Once I was finally in-game and got to moving about, I noticed that trying to interact with the world around me was equally as difficult as navigating the menus. I persisted as best as I could with this, but eventually, Encodya got the best of me - I couldn’t even get past the first area to get a ticket for the train out of the shelter. I felt ashamed that I was struggling with a game so much, but the characters’ overall movement was janky, and they weren’t able to interact with the items around them easily at all. Perhaps this is because I was playing the game with a controller rather than a mouse and keyboard? But if that was the case it is fair to say this port to Switch could do with a lot more time and attention.
“I’ll take whatever’s good and a can of your finest oil for my hulking friend here!”
Maybe this game could have been a better experience on a different console or on PC - if the hardware was more powerful it might have been able to brute force through these performance issues. But, ultimately, Encodya is a game with a relatively simple presentation on a platform that can still run much more intensive games. And maybe I just got unlucky and was struck with countless long loads and wonky item interactions purely by chance. However, at the end of the day, my experience with Encodya was rather dystopian in itself. Like a society that is just about functioning but was breaking down in front of my very eyes. My biggest disappointment is that I didn’t get to enjoy any of the puzzles or story promised by the upfront art and the style of the game before it became near unplayable.
