It’s never a dull moment to freshly visit a release that’s already got more than enough critical lauding behind it. Laika: Aged Through Blood, developed by Spanish team Brainwash Gang, and dubbed “Motorvania”, has already met the positive end of the critical reception stick since its release in 2023. 2 years later, it has finally driven over to the Nintendo Switch, which you’d assume to be a perfect victory lap.
You play as Laika, an immortal anthropomorphic dog who’s in an endless war alongside her similar animal compatriots against a covenant of birds, who’ve deemed themselves genetically superior. Due to her accursed immortality, she’s often seen as the first and last line of defense for the rest of her cabal, who are preparing for a devastating weapon to be used against them by the birds. In between all of this, she is the mother to a growing and otherwise affable pup, who’s destined to take her mantle, as well as her curse, much to the chagrin of Laika.
When I say “Motorvania”, what exactly does that entail? Well, that requires a bit of context. Laika: Aged Through Blood is a title specifically inspired by the Adobe Flash games of old, from Trials to Bush Shoot-Out. It’s the former that is obviously the bigger mine for inspiration, as Laika utilizes old-school Flash bike-riding as its main movement mechanic. As such, you’ll be flipping your bike, wheelie-ing, and struggling with the most curvaceous of hills for most of your playtime.
Not only that but there’s combat on top, the closest comparison being something like the equally audacious My Friend Pedro. The difference between the two however is that instadeath is a permanent possibility throughout your playthrough, but Laika can fight back. The underside of your motorbike can deflect most bullets, as well as your character being able to turn on the 2D platforms in order to deflect bullets on a straight plane.
It’s an easy-to-learn, hard-to-master mechanic, and one that initially provides some berth and exceptionally high swells of pride once you perfect it. Drive head-first into a valley of trigger-happy avian bastards, and spam bullets in every direction until the screen turns into a sea of magnetically-attracted currency and guts. Once it starts, Laika will never let off the brakes, and that’s both a blessing and a burden.
It’s quite easy to find yourself stuck in a relentless cycle of dying and restarting over and over again just to perfect a single section that’s just as likely to have another difficulty spike behind it. It’s an endurance test in how much BS you can take before you either break through with bloody knuckles or shut the console off and say “That’s enough”. As it stands, the latter was the more likely outcome for me.
As it stands, Laika is a game where you have to put the time in, especially when its main movement mechanic defines the progression. As such, the level design seeks to at least be engaging enough throughout the entire runtime with obstacle courses and trick jumps you’re more likely to see in Trials-adjacent titles. However, this doesn’t make backtracking necessarily interesting, more that it becomes a permeating checklist of remembering exactly how and where you’re meant to execute specific jumps on specific ramps, that look like every other specific jump or specific ramps.
This is something that correlates to Brainwash Gang’s history, as their debut game, Nongunz, was a similar war of attrition between how far you’re willing to go to progress, or hell, even understand. In Nongunz’ case, however, the playing field wasn’t surmounted by what could – in certain pretenses – be described as a gimmick. Gimmicky narrative? Sure, but there are bigger demons in sight here.
For one, despite Nongunz’ mono-chromatic visual design, enough attention was paid to busier arenas to make sure the player wasn’t overwhelmed with odds. In Laika, the visual design has been over-produced to the point where it’s an unintelligible mess in its peaks, at least on the Nintendo Switch. This isn’t a case of playing on handheld either, whether it’s the handheld mode, or docked, Laika is simply too busy of a game to justify its messy proceedings.
How do we fix this? Make the camera static. Seriously, Laika is much too interested in constantly messing up perspective, as well as throwing mixed challenges of precision platforming and sludgy combat which I can’t ascertain is a design decision or not. Performance is all over the place on the Nintendo Switch, which puts me in the camp of believing this is a poorly-performing port.
So the question becomes “Is Laika: Aged Through Blood worth driving through despite this?”, and the answer I came to is “no”. The long and short of it is that the story is much too interested in pitting its frankly mawkish narrative against the even more absurd gameplay core of Trials-flipping combat nonsense. It’s an exceptionally harsh juxtaposition that’s hard to shake off unless you’re fully committed to its over-wrought presentation.
It’s not without its failings, mind you. As was the case with Nongunz, Laika is blessed with an utterly fantastic and melancholic soundtrack, composed by Beatriz Ruiz-Castillo. They’re a collectible within the world also, and you bet your bottom dollar they’re worth going the extra mile for. Beautifully composed, and far and away, the most well-intentioned and aligned aspect of Laika’s more gloomy angles.
There’s a distinct flavor to how Laika presents its story, one which requires full dedication to the edginess of its world-building. I mean, it starts off with your daughter wailing at the sight of a crucified anthropomorphic animal - quite upsetting in its depiction, but in hindsight, silly as you see how Laika enacts revenge by being the best showboating motorbike rider in the wastelands.
Laika: Aged Through Blood Review | Final Verdict
In any other timeline, the kind of antics Laika: Aged Through Blood showcases would be a perfect fit for the kind of platforming shenanigans the Nintendo Switch is known for at this point. This isn’t the case, however, as its overdesigned, overcomplicated, and indeed, overcooked storyline fails to make a dent in the library's more venerated classics.
Laika: Aged Through Blood was reviewed on Nintendo Switch using a copy provided by the publisher over the course of 20 hours of gameplay - all screenshots were taken during the process of review.
Review Summary
Pros
- Initially exhilarating core gameplay
- Brilliantly scored soundtrack
Cons
- Quickly becomes a tedious war of attrition
- As a Metroidvania, it struggles to retain basic flow and cadence
- Juxtaposition of mechanics can come across as despondent
- Port performance feels sluggish and needlessly weighted