Demon Tides Review (PC): Making Waves of Past Inspirations

3D platformers may not have the prominent role in gaming that they once did, but they remain a very influential genre of games. That’s on display with Demon Tides, a game that borrows so much from your favorites of the past. You’ll be running around and get shades of Mario, maybe a little Sonic, and throw in a pinch of Celeste and A Hat in Time. It might not nail every one of those inspirations, but it remains a quality game that you can sink hours into.

Low Tides for Smooth Sailing

In Demon Tides, you play as Beebz, a demon that uses her transformation abilities to get past obstacles. Instead of a traditional double jump, Beebz turns into a bat momentarily. Then you can add a drill spin, which actually lets you maintain some time in the air momentarily. While Beebz is quite slow on her feet, you can turn into a snake for a burst of speed on land or in water.

Using these transformations is painless, though it did take me a little time to get used to them. Mostly, this is because transforming will lock you out of being able to do other things until you return to normal. For example, when you turn into a bat, you are no longer able to grab onto a wall and do a wall jump to get up certain areas. Instead of turning back, your bat just bounces off the wall, often leading me to lose a lot of progress. Instances like that, or how easily Beebz bounces around the area with her charge attack, feel at odds with what feels natural in this game.

Outside of those hiccups, platforming in Demon Tides is pretty great. There is a lot of variety in obstacles, with many islands in this open world feeling distinct from each other, and as you progress, the challenges and various things you run into expand quite a bit. You will spend a lot of time in snake form moving around the ocean, exploring these areas to find golden gears for the main progression and badges to augment your abilities with some nice bonuses. A really nice bonus for this exploration is the ability to set your own checkpoint. At first, this threw me off because I would often forget, leading to me kicking myself when I would have a long drop to set me back, but when you do set it, it’s so nice to jump back to where you want to go. It really helps make up for the shortcomings in movement, provided you remember to set it.

Meeting the Rocky Waters

While there are a couple of down points in its platforming, Demon Tides has an overall very good feeling movement system. Outside of that, the game is filled with things that don’t necessarily bog down the experience, but add noise.

One very nitpicking complaint I had was the graffiti that covers this world. Players can tag any surface in the game, and it shows up in other players’ games. I really like the artstyle of Demon Tides, but the graffiti is just the same images pasted all over the place. That’s one thing, but it’s really annoying how the button for opening a chest is the same as getting a closer look at the graffiti on a controller, leading you to have to reposition yourself to avoid these basic images. If I’m tired of seeing these before launch, I can only imagine how littered the world will look in the future.

When it comes to the charm of the game, it’s a little more hit-and-miss. Beebz, as a main character, is just fine, though she has moments where she seems more like an annoying brat rather than a cool protagonist. She has a couple of friends who are quirky enough to be enjoyable, outside of the rather cringey DK, whose dialogue is rather horrible the entire game, adding nothing more than being the “how do you do, fellow kids” meme personified. His throwing out “LOL”, “W”, and “FAX” in normal conversation was kind of painful to see, really. Take him out, though, and the story overall is just fine. I’m not a big fan of voice acting being used for one word or short phrases now and then, but it didn’t ruin the experience.

There are also moments where the performance has a hiccup. Sometimes, looking at a character that is a medium distance away from you will have them acting like they’re a stop-motion character, similar to recent Pokémon games. I also had quite a bit of pop-in when traveling to islands, but luckily, nothing that was too distracting or game-breaking.

Final Verdict

Demon Tides tries to emulate bits and pieces of many 3D platformer favorites, and while it doesn’t nail it all perfectly, it still turns out a very fun and engaging adventure. Outside of some minor annoyances, the movement and traversal techniques feel good, and the growing list of challenges to grab your next golden gear keeps things interesting. I wouldn’t say it’s a hell of a good time, but there is plenty to like as you go bursting off for the next island.

Demon Tides was reviewed on PC with a code provided by Fabraz. It will also later be available on Nintendo Switch.

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