In all the reviews I’ve done on GamesForum I’ve always missed out parts of the play games that really don’t deserve a mention. Like the Dream Garden in NiGHTS: Journey to Dreams, Candy’s Challenges in Donkey Kong Jet Race and the Intergalactic Hay in the Needle stack competition in Duke Nukem Forever. But in my last “actual” review I missed quite a lot of things in Splosion Man that really do need a mention. I thought I seen most of the crap after the first boss but there were subtle ticks that pissed me of even more with this horrible ass game.
So what to start with. Well Splosion Man for me has a good eye for not explaining anything at all, the character himself is never really explained. His origins do intrigue me, is he a mutant abomination that science wants to destroy? Or does he want to destroy civilisation because he lost someone or something. The game’s answer is pretty much “Who gives a ****?” . So his origins are never explained, which is a shame because they could of told us that he is supposed to be annoying so I wouldn’t be upset about it.
I covered up most of the gameplay in the review but here’s something that really pissed me off whilst playing. This game has plenty of obstacles, very misplaced and awfully made obstacles. But to see what you need to do to complete certain obstacles the game needs to zoom out so you can plan a good route to success. Only problem is the screen zooms out too ****ing far that you can’t even see where the hell Splosion Man is.
In the review I said that Splosion Man tried to rip off Sonic the Hedgehog and Super Mario Bros. However that’s not the only game it tries to rip off. Once you start to look at it with a different eye you’ll see that this tries to rip of Portal as much as it can. Let’s have a comparison
Portal
1 Cake (which is questionable)
A quirky song that don’t really fit into the game at all
Set in Laboratory
Appropriate Length
Splosion Man
47 Cakes*
3 quirky songs that don’t fit into the game
Set in Laboratory
Inappropriate Length
* Once you collect 47 Cakes you get an achievement for it. Which is actually the only achievement in this game that feels like you’ve done something. You don’t even get an achievement for beating the game. You get one for beating it on Hardcore but not one for doing it on Normal. And you can only unlock Hardcore by completing this game on Normal. So that means you must complete this horrible ****ty game on one difficultly, so you can unlock another difficultly to complete it, just for one Achievement. Ok, what the hell, you can an achievement for watching the credits and one for changing your controls, BUT YOU DON’T GET AN ACHIEVEMENT FOR BEATING THE GAME AT ALL. You might as well not have achievements in this game if you’re not going to make them a challenge or not rewarding players for doing something worthwhile.
And another thing about the cakes. You know what I think about the “This cake is a lie” joke? Utter bullcrap. It’s not funny, the whole presence of the cake joke itself was unexplained and it’s not needed. Don’t get me wrong, I loved Portal but the most remembered thing about the game is this unfunny joke. And it’s gotten so much publicity in the gaming world now everyone seems to be putting at least one cake into their games. Is it some sort of trend that’ll hopefully die out soon? Like Pokemon Cards? I never follow herds and I especially won’t follow this one at all. So hear me now. If you think that the “This cake is a Lie” joke is funny. You are a complete retard. It’s these types of “jokes” the influence movies like Scary Movie and Meet the Spartans, for ****s sake.
Oh where was I, oh yeah Splosion Man. Another thing I missed out was the boss fights. You have a total of 3 bosses in Splosion Man. A Black Robot*, A drug overdosed Scientist and a Gigantic Meat Monster. The first two are simple, dodge and attack. I would of done it first time if Splosion Man’s controls weren’t so damn unplayable. The last boss is really hard. And I mean REALLY HARD. For a game that’s Platforms are horribly placed and traps which are almost inescapable that’s saying a lot. This is the only part of the game where I needed online help, without the help I would of never guessed how to do it. But seeming as I’m not supposed to spoil anything for you (it’s against my reviewing rights) I can’t tell you what you’ve got to do. Which is a shame because the last boss is really good. The ending to Splosion Man enthralled me. I stopped caring about the randomness and all of a sudden I fell back in love with it. But then it came to me that, I have to spend hours of unplayable, piss-poor gameplay to get to this ending. AND YOU STILL DON’T GET AN ACHIEVEMENT FOR IT.
* I’ve just finally realised why this game is crap. Think about it, A Black Robot, what recent movie had black robots in it? Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. No wonder this game has so many damn explosions in it. This free games was probably directed by Michael Bay. OF COURSE! It all makes sense now!
So overall. Splosion Man is a horrible game. The demo got me intrigued and then the full game pissed me off right down to the core. I’m not going to alter the score because after this little reminisce there would hardly be a score at all. If I did then the score would be 0.5 and that’s only for The Donut Song and The Ending. Now I hope in th future I will get every detail I possibly can into my review (Haha, yeah right).
