Crossing Souls vs Stranger Things
For the last 3 weeks I’ve been snoozing my alarm to review Crossing Souls. I wanted to finish it before I’d post about it, but I took my merry time so I had to come up with something more than a review. This is my best stupid article yet.
So much time has passed since Crossing Souls’ release that the judgement is firmly out: very positive reviews on Steam, mixed/average response from press. I’d guess it’s because the game starts really strong—absolutely fantastic 1980s atmosphere, stylish cartoony pixel art, dynamic gameplay (you switch between 5 characters, each with their own powers)—but wears itself thin towards the end. It left me with a meh feeling due to its worn-out save-the-world storyline and completely broke my patience with a painful last boss fight. After finally beating the ultimate duel (with literally a quarter of a heart left), the game threw me into another boss scene where I died in 5 seconds. My victorious feeling was so trampled that I saw zero reason to go through the whole grindy ordeal again for the 50th time. I watched the last 5% of the game on YouTube and regretted nothing.
Like the reviews indicate, there is a lot to love in the game. I too remain with positive feelings, albeit they make my disinterest for the narrative that much more painful.
Which reminds me of another experience that gives me the fuzzies with the 1980s yet isn’t deeper than a save-the-world-from-monsters plotline: Stranger Things. In fact, if I didn’t know better, I’d think Crossing Souls is a cheap knock-off trying to cash in on Netflix’s popular series. Except Crossing Souls was announced first—if anything, the Spanish action-adventure could have inspired the Duffer brothers. Reality probably lies in the simple fact that they all wanted to pay homage to movies like The Goonies, Ghostbusters, Back to the Future, Gremlins, Poltergeist …
So what happens when two franchises copy the same source material? A lot of astounding parallels that kept me entertained for the bigger part of the gameplay experience.
Oh yeah, SPOILERS AHEAD.
5 kids
Let’s see: one main guy, one black kid, one tough red-headed girl, one dead(ish) small kid. Check, check, check, check. It’s not a perfect match and I have to stick with season 2 of Stranger Things, but it’s a pretty similar gang.
They’re all lovely kids, with your typical tropes from friendships being tested under harsh circumstances, to everyone being in love with the Smurfette on the team.
