For those looking for the most beautiful or moving game ever, whether visually or from a narrative state, move on. For those who are looking for pure action, you're getting a bit warmer but still quite a ways off. If you want a game filled with a mix of puzzles and combat that leans more towards the former, then you're right on the money.
Son of Nor is an indie retro game that has a special touch of magic in it. Conceptually interesting and well achieved. It has original landscapes and scenarios. A truly MUST play!
Finally the game gone out of EA and it made huge progress. Excellent gameplay with a fantastic co-op mode. Finally a Kickstarter project who kept their promises and did all the time communicating to the backers and community. Worth playing and buying.
Enjoyed all hours so far. Spent huge amount of time in **** mode.
Son of Nor has it’s moments of brilliance where its strengths are realized, but ultimately none of its best elements are developed enough to make them feel meaningful for more than a few hours. Nor isn’t bad, but it’s so uninteresting it can hardly claim to be good.
Son of Nor has a lot of good ideas, but it's not a good video game. The interactive possibilities with the environment are great and even some puzzles are clever, but this is a game that could have been better.
Son of Nor is an unpleasant nostalgic romp which brings memories of shoddy games made at the turn of the century. Level and gameplay design, camera movements, graphics… There is not much to see or to do here.
What is the game about?
You may read that elsewhere. I will stick to my experience.
How does it feel like playing it with mouse and keyboard?
First a bit strange. I was excited about moving the sand, but it was irritating to face enemie warriors without having in hand any weapon. While getting introduced to the various ways to finish off an enemy and getting used to handle telekinesis and terraforming it got really entertaining to face enemies. It's not like all these action games where you run around with your gun and repetitively shoot down what comes across. Here every fight is different. You fight them with sand, throwing rocks, precipitating or pushing them into a pit, or shoot the sword of a defeated enemy into the next one. With time you get elemental powers which enable you to fight tougher monsters.
Which method works, depends heavily on your surroundings (Is there sand? Is there anything you can throw?) and on your adversaries: A shielded warriror for example is immune to many attacks but you can telekinetically snatch the shield away from the warrrior (and use it as weapon yourself). Sometimes I found it best to sneak around the enemies using my skills to hide behind a pile of sand, or to distradt them with a noise somewhere else.
In short: In fights you have to think how to get past your enemies the best way under these particular circumstances and it super diversified the game for me.
The other big part of the game are puzzles. Given the huge possibilities I have (terraforming, telekinesis, magic and x logical combinations of them) sometimes I got stuck in a puzzle because i forgot what i am capable of doing (Couldn't kill a monster until I managed to push it off the platform).
How does it feel with Tobii EyeX eye tracker?
I had the possibility to test it in a game exposition. With this device enabled you use the mouse only for clicking and adjusting the viewing direction. But the action focus lies on the thing you are looking at. So: Whithout moving the mouse I could grab the rock at my left (just looking at it and clicking) and shoot it at the enemy approaching from the right corner of the screen (by looking it and clicking again).
And its not like (dark voice:)"Concentrate your eyes on a spot where the desired object lies, and when you are sure, you focussed it, push the right mouse button." It's more like: "Click, click, HEADSHOT!" Because the great thing is: Your eyes focus automatically. You don't need to think about that part.
Normally I spot a rock, move the mouse to center it, grab it, look for the enemy, center it, and shoot. Now just immagine both mouse-moving-actions just drop out. That is how it really feels. Since I am not a hardcore gamer but more a casual one this was the best gaming experience I ever had, because with all other games i was handicapped by my scatterbrained mouse movements.
Because of this I can't other than give a 10 out of 10. Without the eye tracker it would be 9/10
I'm playing this game since the beta. It is a nice blend between action-loaded fights and challenging riddles. The combination of the elements and the telekinesis spell create powerful weapons to defeat the enemies and help to solve the riddles. The game can also be played in coop-mode, on-line or via split-screen which is a neat detail. In my opinion, the only downside of the game are the animations, which could have been done better. 9/10
The game feels and looks more than a little bit unpolished. While game mechanics are there and working ... and graphics are present, both have the feel of an alpha stage.
The physics, arguably the major core of the combat and game mechanics, seems alright but gives me no feeling of actual weight and power. Throwing a tiny rock feels just like picking up a huge one - and both pretty much behave the same when used against enemies.
morphing the ground and environment is a nice mechanic indeed but seems like the effect was copy pasted from a sandbox freeform 3d program. - In other words... my character seems to interact with the surrounding but he himself remains nothing more than a "brush" ... a curser or tool like a mousepointer.
the design of the world feels a little both small and lacking a great deal of detail. Much of this is contributed to the morphing abilities of the player and enemies i reckon - but even so... the world feels empty.
Character design is a matter of taste - but it is not mine. No deduction of points for taste though.
I do know that this is not a AAA title and cannot build on the vast resources of big games - but look and feel of the game is that of playing something like a "RPG creator kit" - a program that needs to make too many compromises to really shine compared to other games.
If you paid for this game, I'm sorry for you. It feels like a soulless cash grab: an asset flip most likely where the devs didn't have the ability to add new features to the engine, so you end up with 'telekinesis' powers that have no way to be upgraded or changed. No gear, no weapons, no skills, no quest log. Completing 'quests' doesn't reward anything. The only positive point was the couch coop, which was fun for about 15 minutes while we laughed at how janky the game was.
Whilst the concept of the game is good - sadly everything else about it is utter tripe.
The germans continue to be better at automotive technology than they seem to fare at gaming software.
With an intro so long you could probably cook, serve and eat your Sunday lunch, you'll either be so damn bored before it even begins that you'll turn it off in disgust at the thought you just forked out money for a five minute short movie - or you'll be itching to play the game.
In truth, it was as much as I could bear to hang on to my sanity before I started pulling my hair out at how infuriatingly long the intro was. I had to wait for ages. And ages.
We have lives devs. We don't want to spend it watching short films on games - unless it's on GTA IV. Otherwise, no.
The graphics. Dear goodness, the graphics are another problem. Despite a mass of backing from thousands of kickstarter supporters, the graphics look like they would be more at place on a playstation 1 console than on a recently manufactured PC. The controls are....strange at best, just plain tricky at worst - and the game...sadly, I couldn't bring myself to play it for that long that by the time I'd sat through the longest intro I'd seen in a while THAT I COULD NOT SKIP - and when confronted with the **** graphics and the dire gameplay, I thought there was only one possible option for **** recycle bin.
SummaryEnter the desert world of Noshrac. You are a Son of Nor, a human mage with the sole mission to protect and preserve what is left of your race. Son of Nor is an action adventure set in a dynamic desert world that can be shaped by the player's powers. Challenging puzzles, dynamic sand manipulations and an innovative magic system await you.