I can best explain the impact of the Steam Greenlight scheme by comparing it to Nicolas Cage’s filmography. Most of them are pretty awful, like Bannock Dangerous, Weather Man or Left Behind. Then there are those very few titles such as Con Air within all of the garbage that sets itself apart with greatness. Son of Nor has wowed many with examples of its dynamic and organic gameplay. It’s bound to become big within the indie crowds, and sets its sights on a larger crowd with its intelligent and dynamic gameplay. Does it break the mold or does it end up being The Wicker Man? My eyes! Let’s see.
Son of Nor‘s narrative takes place within the world of Noshrac, a harsh desert world where humankind is close to extinction, thanks to the Sarahul Empire. Players take control as the Son of Nor, a human mage who is able to control the natural elements with the help of your powerful telekinetic abilities. The main story kicks off with the Son of Nor dreaming of the end of humankind, and of your people. He sets out to discover a way to avoid war between you and the lizard people of Sarahul. The story is nothing that grips or immerses to a high standard, with little character development or depth, you often feel that the story is just there to enclose the dynamic gameplay. The progression of the narrative is fairly generic feeling, and won’t stand out among the rest. I felt that story could have been more engaging and delivered something that felt as engaging as the gameplay, and still stuck with a fairly modular fantasy tale.
The game looks pretty enough, nothing that’s for next gen, but I understand that it’s an indie game funded through Kickstarter. Same goes for the small graphical glitches; they’re passable, as they don’t ruin the experience, neither do they break the game, but may lower the immersion as they do happen often. Enemies also turn into a sand color when they die, as though their textures were removed, slightly odd and not too pleasing on the eyes.
Gameplay is a big part of Son of Nor‘s charm. The game has a dynamic approach to interaction and delivers interesting objectives and puzzle elements that work effectively well with the core mechanics. You’re able to terraform the environment in order to traverse obstacles, prevail in combat, and for solving puzzles. This is a great means of immersing yourself into the game, and one that feels truly exceptional in terms of players interacting with the game world. As I said, Son of Nor allows these interactions to benefit elements such as combat, for instance; using fire on a number of flammable objects to act as a defence or means of attack. Terraforming the sand allows you to build barriers, traps, or slow down your enemies, again, a great way to create diverse gameplay.
You can control a number of objects with your powers in Son of Nor, and use them to solve a great number of puzzles. Feeling more organic and energetic than most games that just would allow players to instead throw a switch. Here it’s more reliant on your own skills. Using your powers to swing a huge wrecking ball, move a number of objects to form a bridge or combine powers, such as wind and fire to set fire and destroy a barrier expands the variations of puzzles and objectives in the game. At times, there’s a bit of repetition in using a simple maneuver for a small obstacle, such as throwing wind to open a sealed door. This happens a little too often within a short space, and feels a little lazy. Like if Isaac Clarke in Dead Space had to hack a door half a dozen times within a span of ten minutes. The doors shouldn’t be there, or at least better use of the powers can.
Boss battles are intense and engaging, like something from Phantom Dust. Sadly, the remainder of combat sections are rather dull and extremely repetitive for the most part. Later on in the game, it focuses a great deal on extremely repetitive combat. An example of which would be six to eight enemies fighting you, plus you have no weapons, rather you must pick up objects and throw them, plus heavy enemies and/or archers who fire arrows like their bows are submachine guns, plus only being able to pick up small crystals and little else in most parts of the game equals bland and repetitive combat. There are moments where the world offers a diverse range of items to use in engaging battles, but a majority of time is often picking up a rock and throwing it at an enemy and repeating on every enemy until they’re dead, and do the same again a few moments later when you enter the next room.
Son of Nor does give a great deal of interaction with the outside world, but sticks to low level platforming inside a majority of temples, such as avoiding the fire of mounted turret. Often the game won’t allow you to pick up an object as a means of cover and move to protect yourself from fire. This gives more into the vein of platforming gameplay, and that’s not as fun.
The stealth aspect of gameplay is one that feels underdeveloped, and in all honestly not needed at all. It never uses the more interesting mechanics of the game, and instead relies on nothing more than hiding in the shadows. For these segments as well, the game often restricts your movement, feeling as though you lack control or freedom in your actions. The game would of benefited from an open world feature, or focusing on more intense combat encounters with single larger enemies, or small groups where there are a multitude of ways of tackling your foes. The game has good boss battles and puzzles, but lacks anything that’s epic in many respects. I also have a small complaint on the navigation system, which to me, does not work at all well. You get a waypoint to guide you, but in many instances, it’s rather confusing in showing you the path that leads you there. It’s just a blue dot on the screen, and if your objective is quite far away, chances are you’re going to get lost very quickly, and often.
The one thing that also benefits from the dynamic gameplay is multiplayer. A huge amount of fun is to be had with two or three players, working together to battle various enemies or powerful bosses. I also highly enjoyed the PVP mode, which focus on combat between two players, creating the same feel as the engaging and epic battles seen in single player. The PVP mode delivers an experience unlike many other versus multiplayer games, where a player’s resourcefulness and use of the environment is the key to winning.
Son of Nor is a rough diamond. A great concept with moments of brilliance, but often settles for the low key or bland moments that underuse the game’s most interesting mechanics and features. Regardless, the game is a great deal of fun and multiplayer is a sheer joy, thanks again to the huge amount of player interaction. I wished more games would be daring and try new methods of interaction between the game world and players.