Laika: Aged Through Blood is one of the darkest games I’ve ever played, which is funny because in several ways it reminds me of Rayman Legends. There’s a content warning at the start of the game about sexual assault, suicide and violence being enacted upon children, and they’re really not messing about with that last one. I’ll be talking about it here, so if that sort of thing bothers you then leave now.
The game starts with your young daughter Puppy telling you, via walkie talkie, that her friend Poochie, also a young child, has been crucified with his own guts. You find his body shortly thereafter and confirm it for yourself, and when you find his father bleeding out having failed in an attempt at revenge, he outlines the gory details; Poochie did not die well. This horrible event sets the tone; the world is a desert wasteland scarred by a past bombing campaign and a brutal army of birds are advancing through it, slaughtering and torturing any non-bird anthropomorphic animal person they find. You are one such anthro animal person named Laika, living in a village called “Where we live” (all locations have descriptive names like that). The women in her family are stricken with a curse; when they reach their teens they’re hit with a catastrophic fever and either they die or they have their first period, after which they become immortal and their mother, who previously had that power, becomes a normal person. Normal as in mortal, she doesn’t stop being an animal. Laika is currently immortal, and her mother Maya trained her to be an incredible biker and shootist; now that the elder’s declared war on the birds, Laika’s the one who’s got to go out and get things done. Laika views herself as “A pawn in someone else’s game”; she’s explicitly referred to as a weapon useful as a bargaining chip, and after having and losing multiple daughters to the curse the elder and her own mother forced her to have Puppy to keep the line going. Her life is not her own, something she treats with grim resignation, but she it’s not all doom and gloom. She adores her daughter and insists she’s too young to even think about starting any kind of training, and there are a whole host of side missions where you help the residents of Where We Live with requests that are often inane and banal, but it’s important to Laika that her friends live, and not just survive. When you’re out and about she’ll sometimes ask what Puppy had for lunch and when told she’ll respond with the likes of “Yummy! That sounds great, honey!” Contrast this with a later scene where she delivers the most genuinely horrifying threat of torture I’ve heard in quite some time, and the ruthless detachment with which she guns down birds. She’s well-rounded; bitter, cynical and ground down by the world, but with a solid vein of humanity running through her. It’s a story of hope and humanity persevering in the darkest and most violent of situations, free will and the darkness people are capable of in certain circumstances.
The game is described by its developer as a “Motorvania”, basically a 2-D metroidvania but outside of Where We Live and a few specific moments, you spend all your time on Laika’s motorbike. The controls take some getting used to, especially under pressure; a shoulder button accelerates and the left stick spins Laika around on an a 360 degree axis, a face button brakes and another, when held, makes you turn around. The trick is the accuracy required when orienting Laika; if you land with her touching the ground instead of the bike, she dies. If you land on a part of the bike that isn’t the wheels then you can salvage it, but it’s tricky. You aim with the right analogue stick and reload by spinning Laika backwards 360 degrees, and do so forwards to refill your bullet-reflecting parry move. It doesn’t take a great deal of momentum or hangtime to reload, but it’s the only way to do so. Where the difficulty comes in is where the Rayman Legends comparison I made right at the start comes in. Enemies are well spaced out either alone or in small groups, and the environment is full of ramps and angles. This, combined with the camera sometimes pulling out and the bosses often requiring you to move away from an advancing screen is reminiscent of Rayman, at least to me. Having to put all these controls together and consider your momentum, under time pressure and with a zoomed out camera and/or smoke obstructing your view of Laika can result in lot of improper landings, and most of the bosses took me several tries. Having said that, the combat is satisfying. Time slows down when you aim and any bullets that hit your bike are blocked, so when the controls properly click and you roar over a ramp towards a trio of birds, block their shots, shoot them dead and reload by doing a backflip it looks and feels really cool.
Outside of combat, the metroidvania elements are limited; you get three abilities that alter how you travel, one of which is barely used and the other only activates right near the end and renders the third and final one superfluous. The exploration is mainly worth it for the environment, seeking out sidequests and to listen to the gorgeous soundtrack, more tracks for which can be found hidden away.
Laika: Aged Through Blood is dark, harsh and poignant. It’s an engaging story about free will, humanity and horrible violence married to a unique, satisfying approach to 2-D metroidvania action games. It’s not for everyone, but if you can get over that initial horror it’s a rewarding experience I fully recommend.
By James Lambert
@jameslambert18
The Reviewing Floor 