Review | Orbitals - Short, Sweet and Built for Two
Orbitals is an absolute visual treat. That’s the main thing I keep thinking about in the days since playing through it in one sitting. There is some kind of magic happening here, with the game perfectly capturing the feeling of an old anime that you’d randomly catch an episode or two of while staying up too late. The first time I moved my character after the opening cutscene, I couldn’t stop smiling because watching the way everything moves and animates is just such a joy.
A game is more than just its looks, though, and thankfully Orbitals also delivers on actually being a video game. Despite the animation of the characters being choppy like a cartoon, the actual movement feels smooth, and getting around the world is a joy. The one place the movement didn’t feel great to me was in the spaceship segments. During these parts, one player flies the ship, and the other controls the ship’s weapons. Strangely, the ship is limited to a 2D plane - you cannot control the ship’s vertical movement. I got used to this eventually, but it never quite felt natural and was always just a little bit jarring.
Outside of the ship segments, though, playing Orbitals was just very fun. There’s nothing too intense or challenging, but the various puzzles were engaging, and the platforming segments were very fun as well. The platforming segments were my favorite part of the game. They often incorporated some extra movement tools like a double jump or jetpack, while my co-op partner had a different gimmick like a ground pound or air dash. Running through these sections, opening paths for and having paths opened by my co-op partner was extremely fun and reminded me of something like New Super Mario Bros. Wii’s multiplayer if it had more of a focus on cooperation rather than inevitably devolving into trolling other players - though the potential for trolling is still present.
My main complaint here is that there simply wasn’t enough. I wanted to do more platforming! Those segments were fun! I would probably play an entire game made up of those kinds of co-op platforming sections. Overall though, I would rather something not wear out its welcome than stick around too long and become tedious (not that I think the platforming was at risk of becoming so.
I don’t really think this is a problem exactly, but some of the platforming and ship combat sections were fairly difficult and required a bit of “locking in” to get through them. Again, I don’t think this is a problem or a negative, but the technical game-playing ability of a potential co-op partner is something to consider.
I haven’t touched on the story yet, but that’s because I didn’t really feel like there was much of a story, or rather, I wasn’t really paying much attention to it. This feels like a difficult thing to get right in a co-op game. Chances are, the co-op partners are talking with each other over some of the cutscenes and especially in-game dialogue. I wouldn’t say the story is bad really, but it neither grabbed me enough most of the time nor repulsed me enough to break me out of most of the conversations I was having with my co-op partner.
Overall, I really enjoyed Orbitals. It was a very fun time as a game, and also as a way of hanging out and catching up with a friend over the internet. It was an absolute treat to look at the entire time I was playing, and I never got tired of moving my character around in little circles and watching the beautiful animation cycles play out. Oh, I also need to mention that buying Orbitals gives you a “global friend pass” to give out to a friend that will allow them to play the game with you without buying it themselves, which is a huge help when trying to convince a friend to play with you.
