Immediately, I appreciated many aspects of Grime Definitive Edition. The art style of this Soulslike action platformer is dull, yet detailed and almost smooth in appearance. The action is heavy, but controlled. The characters are… unique. I mean, you play as a rock creature whose head can turn into a black hole to suck up enemies.
Before I explain, I should point out that Grime was originally released for Windows in 2021. Ports to various consoles followed in 2022, with the Switch version coming in January of this year. It’s good that Switch owners can finally play this unique game, but it’s not the best place to do it. I’ll explain why in a moment. First, let’s look at the setup.
Grime opens with a somewhat disturbing scene of a stone giant breathing life into another. We then limit the player character animating to a cave, by which I mean being assembled into an anthropomorphic rock. Enemies also appear immediately, but you’re given no weapons to fight them with — at least not right away. Instead, you learn how to counter their attacks by turning your head into the aforementioned black hole to suck them in. This destroys the first, weaker enemies, but may just damage the tougher ones to come.
By focusing on counter attacks, Grime changes the way you usually play games of this type. Battle he’s got be close, and you must put yourself in danger, not avoid it. Even better, when you crush your enemies in the head with the black hole you save breath, which you can release to replenish your health points. From the beginning, you prepare yourself for what comes next.
You’ll eventually get weapons from helpful NPCs you meet along the way, but relying on them and their mutations would be a mistake, especially against the numerous bosses you’ll face. The key to victory here is mastering the enemies’ attack patterns, learning when to parry and dodge, and discovering their weaknesses. This takes time, which means repetitions are also needed.
Fortunately, Grime isn’t as bad as it could be. When you lose a match and return to your last save point (Surrogates, in this case), you can start over with the items you acquired at the level you reached. Add in the upgrades you get on the way back and you’ll be a little more prepared for the rematch. Your knowledge of the enemy is what will ultimately get you through the boss fights, but if you die against lesser enemies, conserving your items and levels can help you get through them quickly—useful for avoiding of ending rage.
I emphasize this because Grime is in a world that is exciting to explore. As mentioned at the beginning, the graphics and delivery are quite exciting. This world of sludge and rock somehow also feels very alive and organic, albeit quite dark and oppressive. The enemies’ plans and methods of attack continued to surprise me throughout the campaign, and the entire world was effectively developed throughout the campaign, both visually and narratively. The plot elements are almost as fun to uncover as the game’s many secret areas.
Oh, and on that note, the level design often serves its own frustrations. Progression sometimes requires you to find hidden areas and the map is deliberately not as useful as I would like. The environment also works against you at times, and not just with difficult jumps. The aimless wandering became as much of a problem for me as the numerous restarts.
Unfortunately, I can’t rate Grime Definitive Edition as high as I’d like due to performance issues that interfere with the overall experience. Load times get long in the oddest places, and framerate drops make combat—even just platforming—more difficult than it should be. This happens less in handheld mode, surprisingly, but I still preferred playing while connected because it was easier to decipher everything on the big screen.
There also seems to be some input lag. At first, I thought this might have been intentional. The slow attacks were fitting for a rock guy. But as the battles became more intense and the action began to flow faster, maneuver delays became more of an issue. You can still get used to it, I think, but there were plenty of times when I felt like the Switch port betrayed me.
That’s exactly what this review boils down to. Grime Definitive Edition offers fans of the action platformer a significantly different experience that’s sure to hook them, but the Switch port makes it hard to stick with the game. Aside from solving the performance issues, I wonder if Grime would also look quite a bit cooler on other systems. At least this definitive version gives players instant access to all available DLC and comes at a price that’s more than fair for the time you’ll spend playing through it, if you do.