I finished up Blackthorne last week, beating the evil overlord Sarlac and freeing the player characters' homeworld from enslavement. As the final confrontation drew near, I began to wonder what it would actually look like, given Blackthorne's peek-n-shoot style combat, which is mostly a pretty static affair. It requires the player to duck in and out of cover while timing shots with respect to the enemies' relative movement patterns, which have some randomisation, i.e. the number of shots an enemy will fire before ducking back into cover and the time it takes before they, very ponderously, take another step in towards the player's position. The latter is due to the enemies' ability to kick or strike at the player when they're up close and out of cover. With the later enemies packing a decent punch, this mechanic makes for reasonably engaging shootouts and the game somewhat cleverly employs lack of room to manoeuvre in order to create tension, but, like the game in general, it does get somewhat repetitive once you've tried beating a level a number of times and know how to time your shots and movement up until a certain point.
So, since its usually considered good game design for the final challenge to be somewhat of a test for your abilities to work with the game mechanics so far introduced, I couldn't quite picture how the designers were going to craft an engaging boss battle using the game's mixture of rigid gunplay, obstacle-based platforming, mild puzzles and sluggish movement of the player character!
And, as I had already anticipated, Blackthorne decides to change up it's core game mechanic at the very last minute: Sarlac is fast and constantly moves around the small throne room area where you encouter him and, unlike all other enemies so far, taking cover doesn't dodge his powerful melee attack. This means that when he zooms in (after taking pot shots from the edge of the screen, which can be avoided by taking cover, or calling down lightning strikes, which have to be dodged by moving out of the way) the player has to walk one step away from him in the one direction and then one step in the other direction as soon as Sarlac teleports "behind" the player to repeat his attack. This game of evade the lightning and the melee two-step are unprecedented in terms of mechanics and I'm still not sure if this is a good thing to throw at the player after 12 levels of puzzle platforming and peekaboo shotouts. It goes without saying that Sarlac takes a lot more shots to kill than any other enemy so far, so many, in fact, that the designers threw in another 11th-hour innovation: an enemy health bar.
So, in conclusion, I would have found this sudden change of pace a bit annoying if I had not, to my own surprise, managed to beat Sarlac on the fifth or so try. That was probably for the best, since I couldn't see myself investing a lot more time in Blackthorne. The game was fun while it lasted, but had it lasted even a bit longer frustration would have definitely outweighed enjoyment!
