Author: sick skills

There’s no shortage of platformers on the Switch eShop nowadays, but that certainly hasn’t done anything to deter Splasher from carving out its own niche in the library. Created by some staff that worked on the likes Rayman Legends and Rayman Origins, Splasher works as a brilliant callback to that style of twitch platforming while adding in a little bit of Splatoon to make something that’s rather fresh.

The premise of the game is simple: you’re a common worker of the evil Inkorp who has realized the company’s sinister intentions. Utilizing the might of your paint gun, you’ll run, jump and splash your way to freedom, freeing your fellow workers from captivity along the way. It’s fun, irreverent and weird, perfectly fitting the style of gameplay by keeping the tone light and upbeat throughout.

Gameplay is reminiscent of the above mentioned Rayman games and Super Meat Boy, aiming for a decidedly rapid pace that encourages constant retries. Your character is precise but slippery; this isn’t a deliberately paced platformer, it’s one that actively encourages you to keep moving. The gimmick here is that ink plays a significant role in both the obstacles and the way you navigate levels. Red ink makes you stick to surfaces, yellow ink acts as a bounce pad, and water can wash both types of ink away.

Levels are designed in a brilliant fashion that somehow strikes that balance between being fast-paced while still taking the time to teach you mechanics by way of showing and not telling. Nothing in Splasher comes at you as a surprise, obstacles and mechanics are introduced in a safe environment and then the game gradually takes the training wheels off as it steps up the difficulty. On top of that, levels are made with the idea of flow; there’s really only one way to get through any given set of obstacles and the game encourages you to keep retrying until you can find the right moves. Checkpoints are plentiful and there are no lives – when you die you quickly reset and have another go.

Splasher excels at providing the right amount of difficulty at the right time, and manages to feel fresh throughout its run. Though there are several recurring themes and obstacles in levels, it’s quite keen on introducing alternative spins on old ideas and bringing in new ideas at a decent clip. You’ll rarely find yourself bored while working through the campaign, and just when you find yourself becoming familiar with its tricks something new gets tossed in to re-engage you once more.

The campaign is relatively short, but this is because of the game’s broader focus on replayability. Every stage has an optional seven workers to save, each of which spells out a character in “SPLASH!”. You’ll find these workers scattered about levels in hard to reach places or in special Quarantine Zones that act as Donkey Kong Country-style bonus levels. Beyond this, however, there is a speedrunning focus. Beating the game once through is essentially just a long training run for the speedrun modes, which task you with beating the game as fast as possible for glory in the leaderboards.

This is where the real beauty of Splasher emerges – every level is fine tuned for you to blast through, and you’ll gradually drop time as you get the muscle memory worked out, much like a 2D Sonic game. It takes practice and work to get right, but there are few things more satisfying than shaving some extra seconds off your time and knowing that you completely mastered a given level’s challenge. It’s here that players will likely invest the majority of their gameplay time; there’s always something that could be done just a little bit faster or tighter to shave off some extra time.

From a presentation perspective Splasher doesn’t necessarily have a wow-factor, but it gets the job done. The artstyle adopts a quirky animated 2D look that utilizes bold lines and simple colours, perhaps evoking memories of mid-2000s Flash games. It’s not exactly a stand-out in this regard, but it looks quite smooth in action and the levels are all designed to have lots of activity and weirdness going on in the background and foreground. The soundtrack opts for an industrial dubstep sound, which somehow manages to feel both fitting and strangely out of place. It doesn’t sound half bad, though, and there are some tracks that bring to mind the music of David Wise’s Donkey Kong Country soundtracks, which is a nice bonus.

Conclusion

All told Splasher is a smartly designed, tight platformer that offers up hours of replay value on top of the creative ideas it delivers. It takes the Super Meat Boy template and builds upon it in a notable way, creating an experience that feels just the right amount of familiar and fresh. Though there isn’t a whole lot to write home about when it comes to the presentation, the core gameplay is more than enough to keep you engaged.

We give this one a strong recommendation, especially to those who are looking to dip their toes into the twitch platforming genre. Splasher is easy enough to pick up, yet difficult to master, and stands as a worthy addition to the Switch eShop.

Even to someone without an earnest interest in them, monster trucks are an awe-inspiring sight. The giant wheels, the loud engine and a gauche chassis upholding a crazily designed body scream power both literally and figuratively. It’s not hard to imagine wanting to drive one, jumping over destroyed cars and hills whilst the muffler hollers in rage. There’s a lot that you could do with that in a video game to bring that suffocating and unhinged power to a player, ideal for vehicular power fantasies.

Monster Jam: Crush It! doesn’t fulfill this wanderlust. In fact, it barely functions as a mediocre game at most points.

The biggest point of contention, and what is ultimately the crux as to whether this type of game works, is that something is amiss in the feel of how the vehicles drive. Being loose and slippery is to be expected, but Monster Jam goes so far down that path it’s as if the tires are made of soap and you’re driving on a watery surface. The sense of control isn’t acceptable; you never feel as if your hands are on the wheel, but rather that you’re passively suggesting where your truck goes. There’s no feedback on the screen and not even any rumble to give you a feel for the drive; with that in mind, the modes can’t hold together because they are just as broken as the controls.

Monster Jam floats four options to you. The first is races, which has you haphazardly hitting check points in various loops in contained arenas against another truck. At no point does it feel like you’re competing against anything but your own patience, as the other truck randomly moves around and you float across checkpoints. Proceeding is a matter of attrition as, even when tackling the track in the same manner, whether or not you win feels like it’s based on fortune. Freestyle is a trick competition that has you hopping, doing wheelies and spinning donuts to meet an arbitrary point total. While the racing feels utterly reliant on luck, freestyle is always an “I win” game because there’s no skill needed to pull off the high point tricks. Rounding out the ways to play is a demolition mode that loosely scores you based on how well you run over things, and a hill climb that feels like Excitebike or Trials – only without the thrills.

The final nail in the giant coffin is a presentation that fails on both a thematic and technical scale – this makes it even harder to recommend Monster Jam to even the most stalwart monster truck aficionado. The game has numerous collision issues that add to that lack of true control, and in our time with it the game even crashed on multiple occasions. The visuals are ho-hum in general, but a low resolution smeariness permeates the entire experience. Match this with a terrible metal soundtrack and an obnoxious announcer and you have a game that isn’t fun to look at, listen to or play.

Conclusion

Whether you’re a monster truck nut or not, you should avoid Monster Jam: Crush It! at all costs. It lacks a lot of polish, has a lackluster presentation, poor controls and no semblance of progression that can in any way be construed as satisfying. It feels like a slapdash attempt at riding the wave of Switch goodwill, but doesn’t join the growing list of games on the system that are worth playing.