I’m a retro lover at heart. This means that I love anything old school and hinting towards that good old time when pixels were our friends and controllers consisted of just one button and a much easier time for our little grey cells. It also, for me anyway, meant simplistic gameplay that made playing software a joy, whichever side of the gaming divide (Sega/Nintendo or Commodore/Amstrad/Spectrum) you were on. So many games nowadays seem to ignore this in favour of repeating whatever they think works, but boring everyone else in the process. At least if you’re going to attempt that, you should make things more interesting.
Enter ’Splosion Man, Twisted Pixel Games’ new XBLA effort, which seems to combine the brutally addictive gaming from another downloadable gem, N+ with a graphical upheaval and a truly different (and very humorous) style. You play as the leading man, who is someone with a huge chip on his shoulder and wants to not only get out of the lab he finds himself in, but take out every single scientist in there with him as he does so. Between you and certain freedom lies 47 levels of puzzle and platform action spread across 3 worlds, but can he do it with a great explosion of fun or is it just a dud? Let’s take a look.
Something about this game just screams out fun in the graphics department. It isn’t in the cel shaded area of gaming (or as some would call it that dark, dank part of the industry that no-one really loves, but puts up with it) and it isn’t Gears of War serious either, finding a lovely 2.5D appearance that suits it greatly and helps to harbour back to the good old days. The main character is well drawn, as is everything in the game to be honest and I can’t fault the way it brings so much colour to your eyes, bearing in mind that you’re stuck in a laboratory for most of it.
A personality in a game character is hard to do well, but if you can picture a 1000 degree version of Pinky from Pinky and the Brain then you start to get an idea of who you are and it does a great job of making you smile, if not giggle and in some cases laugh out loud (I’m too old to abbreviate it, I’m sorry…lol). The actual humour in ‘Splosion Man is just so refreshing and lovely to be a part of as you help him reach his goal. The noises he makes as he runs from one level to the next never get monotonous and the donut song is a joy to behold. You feel that all seriousness was left at the door when this game was made and that is such a breath of fresh air in an industry that sometimes loses itself in its own progress.
Another good point with the way it plays is its difficulty curve, neither creating a barrier to put people off or have players finish it in time for dinner. The puzzles are well thought out and a lot of it involves timing, which helps to add a bit of suspense, but for some reason you never get fed up of trying. This could be because the checkpoints are nicely positioned so as not to annoy people who suffer from Cant-start-at-the-beginning-after-5-minutes-itis. As an example, I was fighting the first boss character and was stuck on the same level for 25 minutes and didn’t get fed up once, which says something (although I was being an idiot and could do it a damn sight quicker now).
Audio is also another feather in the already well spruced cap of ‘Splosion Man. The music is very upbeat and never annoys you, as the Donut song already mentioned proves. The sound effects are also very well suited for this game, but the most impressive and entertaining thing of all is the vocal talent, as it’s just so well done with the hot hero taking the plaudits. You can make a character as zany looking as you want, but you really need the sum of all the parts to work and you can’t fault the sound department for what it’s done.
The best part is the gameplay though. The simple retro styled 2 dimensional screen crammed with 3D images help to keep the progress fluid and the fun factor very high. It never feels like a chore, not to mention it’s a BLOODY fast game when it wants to be as you hit the exploding barrels in quick succession. It’s also quite varied, with moments of potentially certain death appearing every so often as water rises from the bottom of the screen. Other hazards await you, but there’s no point in telling you ALL of it. What would that leave you to find?
It’s usually about this time that you want to see what faults I’ve found. Unfortunately I can’t do that because as an XBLA title I would have to rank it up there with the already outstanding N+ and say it‘s as ideal an arcade title as you can get. The fact there is a multiplayer mode included and the potential for more levels via downloadable content just makes it an even more enticing deal. The up to 4 player alternative also has 47 levels which are different to the main game to incorporate more team based gameplay to get to the end and the fact that all this is available for 800 points is just fantastic. You don’t often get no-brainers in this section of the industry, but as it stands, this is an essential piece of software to get a hold of and at a very fair price to boot. The blending of the mature way of playing games with the modern day demands of graphics that cannot afford to be flat and dull is a hard thing to get right, but Twisted Pixel have managed to not just do exactly that, but they’ve set a high bar for others to try and reach.
This game is, quite literally, an absolute blast!!!!!
VideogameUK verdict: 9/10
