I downloaded the demo from the PSP kiosk.
First impressions: WOW this game has frickin' good art direction. You're Mr. ESC, an all-black character in a hat and a red scarf (who kinda looks like the Linux Red Hat mascot). Your goal is to save people (by walking over them) and escorting them to the Exit of the level. Graphics are freaking great; it's 2D gameplay but the backgrounds are 3D and definitely have depth and dimension. 2D really does look miraculous on the PSP dammit!
It's kinda like classic Prince of Persia. Your dude can walk around, jump, do running jumps, grab on to ledges, etc. He is not stupid and will not walk off edges (he'll flail his arms).
First level has you pushing crates...cough. Well, it's actually an okay gameplay mechanic, because it's a puzzle platformer after all, so I'll forgive the appearance of crates. You can step on thingies that open doors, pick up items (keys to unlock doors), get fire extinguishers, get rope/ladder sets. At this point you're probably like "Hey, this sounds generic!", but the game actually requires you to interact with the victims and tell them what to do for you to reach the goal.
When you hit the triangle button it brings up a cursor. You can zoom all over the level in this mode. You click on the victim (that you've rescued), and then you click on a space to tell him to go there, or click on a crate or item to tell him to use it or push it. You may also need a victim's strength to push heavy stuff out of your way, together. Best of all, the victims are not retarded and will not fall off edges, and are able to jump and do almost everything you can (not sure about the running jumps though). If you tell them to get somewhere, they WILL get there (actually, one guy took a route that I hadn't thought of).
The game's voices are all in English, and the acting is okay. The victims say weird shit like "Why me?" or "I'm stinky!"...er, yeah. Text appears in English in speech balloons. The background music ROCKS, it's like a cross between orchestral action-movie music and funk; give me the soundtrack! The interface is also awesome and uses old American touch-tone phone sounds (!).
The only problem is that player movement feels VERY SLOW. I would personally make some of the motions (climbing ladders, stepping over crates, turning from left to right, pushing stuff) run at double-speed. There is a time limit for each level -- I didn't come close to running out, but for some of the timed doors and stuff I can see it getting annoying. For some reason, the pacing seemed a little better once I got past the first two tutorial levels (the demo has 4 levels in total), but this is a game that could stand to get a little speed boost.
Anyway, there ya go. Slick and stylish and pretty frickin' cool, but I wouldn't mind it boogieing along a little faster.
First impressions: WOW this game has frickin' good art direction. You're Mr. ESC, an all-black character in a hat and a red scarf (who kinda looks like the Linux Red Hat mascot). Your goal is to save people (by walking over them) and escorting them to the Exit of the level. Graphics are freaking great; it's 2D gameplay but the backgrounds are 3D and definitely have depth and dimension. 2D really does look miraculous on the PSP dammit!
It's kinda like classic Prince of Persia. Your dude can walk around, jump, do running jumps, grab on to ledges, etc. He is not stupid and will not walk off edges (he'll flail his arms).
First level has you pushing crates...cough. Well, it's actually an okay gameplay mechanic, because it's a puzzle platformer after all, so I'll forgive the appearance of crates. You can step on thingies that open doors, pick up items (keys to unlock doors), get fire extinguishers, get rope/ladder sets. At this point you're probably like "Hey, this sounds generic!", but the game actually requires you to interact with the victims and tell them what to do for you to reach the goal.
When you hit the triangle button it brings up a cursor. You can zoom all over the level in this mode. You click on the victim (that you've rescued), and then you click on a space to tell him to go there, or click on a crate or item to tell him to use it or push it. You may also need a victim's strength to push heavy stuff out of your way, together. Best of all, the victims are not retarded and will not fall off edges, and are able to jump and do almost everything you can (not sure about the running jumps though). If you tell them to get somewhere, they WILL get there (actually, one guy took a route that I hadn't thought of).
The game's voices are all in English, and the acting is okay. The victims say weird shit like "Why me?" or "I'm stinky!"...er, yeah. Text appears in English in speech balloons. The background music ROCKS, it's like a cross between orchestral action-movie music and funk; give me the soundtrack! The interface is also awesome and uses old American touch-tone phone sounds (!).
The only problem is that player movement feels VERY SLOW. I would personally make some of the motions (climbing ladders, stepping over crates, turning from left to right, pushing stuff) run at double-speed. There is a time limit for each level -- I didn't come close to running out, but for some of the timed doors and stuff I can see it getting annoying. For some reason, the pacing seemed a little better once I got past the first two tutorial levels (the demo has 4 levels in total), but this is a game that could stand to get a little speed boost.
Anyway, there ya go. Slick and stylish and pretty frickin' cool, but I wouldn't mind it boogieing along a little faster.
