Metrico is a recent puzzle platforming title released for the PlayStation Vita and made free in August, 2014 through PlayStation Plus. Your platforming comes in the way of statistics and “controlling” them.
In concept, Metrico sounds like an interesting platforming title, or at least it did to me. At first it is. Then, as you start getting more “actions” introduced to you, the game starts to just become an exercise in frustration. By the end I found myself about ready to throw my Vita out a window from a ten story building because the mechanics were getting so annoying. The mechanics you’ll have to deal with include rotating your Vita in various ways and needing to use the camera to recognize certain colors.
For as much as I liked Flower, the one thing I disliked about the title? The controls on both PlayStation 3 and Vita. Now why am I mentioning Flower? Because Metrico uses the same sort of idea for the “rotate” your Vita controls. You need to turn it either clockwise or counter-clockwise and it will randomly decide to just “reset” into a point that is completely non-helpful. While yes, you can reset the puzzle you’re on either completely or to the last checkpoint*, it’d be nice if these motion controls didn’t exist at all.
I marked the “last checkpoint” for a reason as well. Sometimes you’ll find that your “last checkpoint” is in an even less useful place. Your checkpoints are denoted as small circles placed throughout the puzzles. Some puzzles even require the use of these in particular ways, such as activating a certain number of them. This can lead to these puzzles being pretty easy to screw up as well.
When it came to the final introduced mechanic, the use of the rear camera to recognize certain colors, that is when I was about ready to throw my Vita from the nearest mountain. My items I have that are blue were being recognized as green. When I needed to find white, I pointed it right at several sources of white and it struggled to recognize it. An image I found to make it “easier” it kept recognizing two colors at once, which made some puzzles even more challenging than they should have been.
Metrico comes down to a good idea in the use of “statistics” to control the platforming and puzzles but fails on some terrible controls and mechanics. If these mechanics had either been better implemented (better color recognition) or just hadn’t even existed, Metrico had the potential to be great. Unfortunately it just isn’t. It’s also extremely short, coming in at only 6 worlds that will maybe only take you a few hours to complete. Save your money and time and look elsewhere for a platforming title.
Metrico Review Score
1.5/5
What mechanics were decent, such as earlier ones that didn’t require trying to do 5 things at once while on a time limit, are the only thing going for Metrico. The graphics also look halfway decent for the type of game it is.
