Applejack
10-10-2010, 12:57 PM
Comic Jumper, the latest game from Twisted Pixel, the guys behind The Maw and 'Splosion Man (two good XBLA titles) have come out with their third XBLA game entitled 'Comic Jumper'. The Maw was a pretty unique puzzle/adventure type game and 'Splosion Man was a crazy platformer. Comic Jumper is...well...it's a game. But...it's not a great game.
Comic Jumper stars Captain Smiley, a superhero whose comic is so lame and awful that it gets canceled. To get enough money to restart his comic, Captain Smiley decides to do guest spots in other comics and basically act as a hero for hire. However, this is expensive so the nice folks at Twisted Pixel, in what is probably the greatest use of fourth wall breaking in any video game ever made, decide to hook up Captain Smiley with the technology to 'jump' into other comics. Yes, that's right, the people that work at Twisted Pixel are in the game. As themselves. The folks at Twisted Pixel have a greenscreen and fuck, they know how to use it.
There are four distinct styles you encounter in the game, and all of them relate to comics. There's the Modern Era where things are all shiny and flashy. The Fantasy genre where it's all...prehistoric and shit. The Silver Age, where there is an assload of sexism, misogyny, and everything looks like old superhero comics. And then there is manga which is....well...manga. Each era is unique in terms of style. Captain Smiley gets a new look with every new type of comic he enters, and the visuals change accordingly.
The fantasy era puts you in the comic 'Nanoc the Obliterator'. If you don't know what that is parodying, take a look at the name Nanoc. Now look at it backwards. If there was a weakest link to be found, it would be in this world as the writing isn't as good as in other worlds an it's just kind of uninteresting.
The silver age puts you in the comic 'Improbable Paper Pals' which stars The Origami Kid and his sidekick Paper Lad, who is literally a wad of paper and is also going through puberty. The villain is Mistress Ropes, a woman fighting for suffrage and equal rights in a world that is dominated by sexist men. There are a lot of jokes about and at the expense of women in this section and holy shit they are hilarious. It also has one of the single greatest movie references ever.
The best, however, is the manga section. 'Cutie Cutie Kid Cupids', which is a shoujo manga. This section makes it clear that the people who designed it have no idea about manga. And holy shit it is all the more hilarious for it. You go through levels right to left, ride Pling Pling the Rainbow Pony, end each level in a song, fight a giant Asian head for no reason, go to Hent High (home of the tentacles), fight high school girls who just randomly say "SUGOI!" and "KAWAII!" and holy fuck it is just hilarious.
In fact, the best thing to be said about the game is how fucking funny it is. It is up there as one of the funniest games I have ever played. Ever. I was constantly in hysterics as the levels went on, culminating in such a hilarious ending that I pissed myself. Not literally of course.
But the problem comes when you're playing the game. It's not especially fun to play at times. The game feels, at times, like a bunch of 16-bit games tossed together. You've got the run n gun like Contra or Gunstar Heroes, the melee like Streets of Rage (only dumbed down considerably), and even some weird perspective based shooting like in Panser Dragoon. The problem is that all that doesn't come together especially well. Mainly because the crux of the game, the shooting bits, isn't great. Why? Because enemies take A LOT of bullets to die. Like, way more than you think they should. And while you're standing there dumping, enemies will come from behind or above and since you can't shoot both your guns in different directions at the same time, you'll often have to STOP shooting a dude in front of you to focus on the one from behind an then take damage from the others who have now spawned in front of you.
If you're like me, as soon as you beat the first level, you do challenge number 2 (the challenges are basically 'kill dudes. get hit once, you're done), buy a bunch of bonus content (bonus content you buy, such as concept art or sound clips gets you BONUS MONEY IN EVERYTHING), then grind out the challenge for like thirty minutes and then buy all of the upgrades. However, even with all the upgrades, sometimes it feels like enemies still take far too long to die. Maybe I'm just impatient, but when I have to shoot a dude for like a good 5 seconds when there are like six other dudes all gunning for me, it gets annoying.
The melee sections are just unfun. Every enemy takes three hits and they die. No challenge at all. The ONLY reason they exist is to fill your special attack meter. And holy shit the special attack in the game might be one of the greatest special attacks in any game ever made. Look it up. It's awesome.
The voice acting is also real good. Captain Smiley and Star (the wisecracking sarcastic star that lives on Smiley's chest) are both voiced by Christopher Sabat. You might know him better as Vegeta. But the whole cast is great. Mistress Ropes really nailed the 50s era femme fatale and Nanoc does a mean Arnold impersonation. All around solid voice work and writing.
Comic Jumper is not a great game. It has the challenge of an old school game, but not in the way you are probably expecting. But the story and humor made it worth the price of admission for me, and it certainly helped me get through the game. I wanted to see what crazy shit was waiting for me. My suggestion: Download the demo. You'll get a taste of the gameplay styles you'll find in the game and also some of the humor. But the humor in the first level is NOT indicative of the humor elsewhere in the game. Unless you find such lines as 'You big pile of fail' funny. Don't judge the humor solely on the demo. But if you liked what you saw in the demo, and I admit I wasn't sold on it until the cutscene after the first level), give Comic Jumper a purchase.
3/5
Comic Jumper stars Captain Smiley, a superhero whose comic is so lame and awful that it gets canceled. To get enough money to restart his comic, Captain Smiley decides to do guest spots in other comics and basically act as a hero for hire. However, this is expensive so the nice folks at Twisted Pixel, in what is probably the greatest use of fourth wall breaking in any video game ever made, decide to hook up Captain Smiley with the technology to 'jump' into other comics. Yes, that's right, the people that work at Twisted Pixel are in the game. As themselves. The folks at Twisted Pixel have a greenscreen and fuck, they know how to use it.
There are four distinct styles you encounter in the game, and all of them relate to comics. There's the Modern Era where things are all shiny and flashy. The Fantasy genre where it's all...prehistoric and shit. The Silver Age, where there is an assload of sexism, misogyny, and everything looks like old superhero comics. And then there is manga which is....well...manga. Each era is unique in terms of style. Captain Smiley gets a new look with every new type of comic he enters, and the visuals change accordingly.
The fantasy era puts you in the comic 'Nanoc the Obliterator'. If you don't know what that is parodying, take a look at the name Nanoc. Now look at it backwards. If there was a weakest link to be found, it would be in this world as the writing isn't as good as in other worlds an it's just kind of uninteresting.
The silver age puts you in the comic 'Improbable Paper Pals' which stars The Origami Kid and his sidekick Paper Lad, who is literally a wad of paper and is also going through puberty. The villain is Mistress Ropes, a woman fighting for suffrage and equal rights in a world that is dominated by sexist men. There are a lot of jokes about and at the expense of women in this section and holy shit they are hilarious. It also has one of the single greatest movie references ever.
The best, however, is the manga section. 'Cutie Cutie Kid Cupids', which is a shoujo manga. This section makes it clear that the people who designed it have no idea about manga. And holy shit it is all the more hilarious for it. You go through levels right to left, ride Pling Pling the Rainbow Pony, end each level in a song, fight a giant Asian head for no reason, go to Hent High (home of the tentacles), fight high school girls who just randomly say "SUGOI!" and "KAWAII!" and holy fuck it is just hilarious.
In fact, the best thing to be said about the game is how fucking funny it is. It is up there as one of the funniest games I have ever played. Ever. I was constantly in hysterics as the levels went on, culminating in such a hilarious ending that I pissed myself. Not literally of course.
But the problem comes when you're playing the game. It's not especially fun to play at times. The game feels, at times, like a bunch of 16-bit games tossed together. You've got the run n gun like Contra or Gunstar Heroes, the melee like Streets of Rage (only dumbed down considerably), and even some weird perspective based shooting like in Panser Dragoon. The problem is that all that doesn't come together especially well. Mainly because the crux of the game, the shooting bits, isn't great. Why? Because enemies take A LOT of bullets to die. Like, way more than you think they should. And while you're standing there dumping, enemies will come from behind or above and since you can't shoot both your guns in different directions at the same time, you'll often have to STOP shooting a dude in front of you to focus on the one from behind an then take damage from the others who have now spawned in front of you.
If you're like me, as soon as you beat the first level, you do challenge number 2 (the challenges are basically 'kill dudes. get hit once, you're done), buy a bunch of bonus content (bonus content you buy, such as concept art or sound clips gets you BONUS MONEY IN EVERYTHING), then grind out the challenge for like thirty minutes and then buy all of the upgrades. However, even with all the upgrades, sometimes it feels like enemies still take far too long to die. Maybe I'm just impatient, but when I have to shoot a dude for like a good 5 seconds when there are like six other dudes all gunning for me, it gets annoying.
The melee sections are just unfun. Every enemy takes three hits and they die. No challenge at all. The ONLY reason they exist is to fill your special attack meter. And holy shit the special attack in the game might be one of the greatest special attacks in any game ever made. Look it up. It's awesome.
The voice acting is also real good. Captain Smiley and Star (the wisecracking sarcastic star that lives on Smiley's chest) are both voiced by Christopher Sabat. You might know him better as Vegeta. But the whole cast is great. Mistress Ropes really nailed the 50s era femme fatale and Nanoc does a mean Arnold impersonation. All around solid voice work and writing.
Comic Jumper is not a great game. It has the challenge of an old school game, but not in the way you are probably expecting. But the story and humor made it worth the price of admission for me, and it certainly helped me get through the game. I wanted to see what crazy shit was waiting for me. My suggestion: Download the demo. You'll get a taste of the gameplay styles you'll find in the game and also some of the humor. But the humor in the first level is NOT indicative of the humor elsewhere in the game. Unless you find such lines as 'You big pile of fail' funny. Don't judge the humor solely on the demo. But if you liked what you saw in the demo, and I admit I wasn't sold on it until the cutscene after the first level), give Comic Jumper a purchase.
3/5