{"id":117629,"date":"2020-09-06T13:00:00","date_gmt":"2020-09-06T13:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.nintendolife.com\/reviews\/switch-eshop\/lair_of_the_clockwork_god"},"modified":"2020-09-06T13:00:00","modified_gmt":"2020-09-06T13:00:00","slug":"review-lair-of-the-clockwork-god-a-humorous-attempt-at-mashing-together-two-opposing-genres","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/2020\/09\/06\/review-lair-of-the-clockwork-god-a-humorous-attempt-at-mashing-together-two-opposing-genres\/","title":{"rendered":"Review: Lair Of The Clockwork God &#8211; A Humorous Attempt At Mashing Together Two Opposing Genres"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"media_block\"><a href=\"https:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/reviews\/switch-eshop\/lair_of_the_clockwork_god\/large.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/reviews\/switch-eshop\/lair_of_the_clockwork_god\/small.jpg\" class=\"media_thumbnail\"><\/a><\/div>\n<div id>\n<aside class=\"picture embed\"><a title=\"Lair of the Clockwork God Review - Screenshot 1 of 4\" href=\"https:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/screenshots\/108226\/large.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/screenshots\/108226\/900x.jpg\" width=\"900\" height=\"506\" alt=\"Lair of the Clockwork God Review - Screenshot 1 of 4\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Captured on Nintendo Switch (Handheld\/Undocked)<\/p>\n<\/aside>\n<p>Ben and Dan are somewhat unsung heroes of gaming. Their first two games, the sadly PC-only <strong>Ben There, Dan That!<\/strong> and <strong>Time Gentlemen, Please!<\/strong> were extremely traditional Lucasarts-esque point-and-click adventure games, featuring designers Ben Ward and Dan Marshall as \u2013 nominally \u2013 <em>themselves<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>Eleven years after their time-travelling adventure, Ben and Dan have returned in <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nintendolife.com\/games\/switch-eshop\/lair_of_the_clockwork_god\">Lair of the Clockwork God<\/a><\/strong>, a genre-melding mash-up of their classic point-and-click antics with the more en vogue indie platform game \u2013 an uneasy styles clash that&#8217;s humorously weaved into the very meta-narrative.<\/p>\n<p>Having taken keen note of modern trends, Dan has taken on a new persona \u2013 rejecting Ben&#8217;s fastidious adherence to adventure game tropes in favour of becoming a platformer hero, complete with periodic upgrades to his move set, including the evergreen double jump.<\/p>\n<p>The crux of Clockwork God&#8217;s gameplay, story and puzzles all stem from this uneasy dichotomy; early in the game, for example, adventurer Ben encounters a minuscule raised step and refuses to climb it, as doing so would be the actions of a platforming hero \u2013 not a wannabe Guybrush Threepwood like him. How do you get Ben over this impassable step? Well, it involves the discovery of an entirely new type of gravity, desecrating the corpse of a clown and, er, urinating. Mostly, though, it requires the player to switch to Dan for a bit of <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nintendolife.com\/games\/switch-eshop\/super_meat_boy\">Super Meat Boy<\/a><\/strong>-esque platforming fun. Where Ben inspects and combines \u2013 sorry, <em>crafts \u2013<\/em> items, Dan climbs walls, dodges spikes, collects trinkets and runs gauntlets.<\/p>\n<aside class=\"picture embed\"><a title=\"Lair of the Clockwork God Review - Screenshot 2 of 4\" href=\"https:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/screenshots\/108233\/large.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"lazy\" src=\"\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg' viewBox='0 0 900 506'%3E%3C\/svg%3E\" width=\"900\" height=\"506\" data-original=\"https:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/screenshots\/108233\/900x.jpg\" alt=\"Lair of the Clockwork God Review - Screenshot 2 of 4\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Captured on Nintendo Switch (Docked)<\/p>\n<\/aside>\n<p>It&#8217;s a piecemeal, awkward approach by design, but we couldn&#8217;t help but wonder if that really <em>excused<\/em> it. Making jokes out of the awkwardness papers over the cracks to an extent, but it reminded us of <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nintendolife.com\/games\/switch-eshop\/bards_tale_arpg_remastered_and_resnarkled\">A Bard&#8217;s Tale: Remastered and Resnarkled<\/a><\/strong> \u2013 you can wise off about weak, tired gameplay all you want, but if the player still has to endure it, there&#8217;s a problem. Initially, this didn&#8217;t sit too well with us.<\/p>\n<p>The keyword, though, is <em>initially<\/em>. The earliest segments of Clockwork God set it up for us as a bit of a disappointment; traversing the same ground with both characters felt time-consuming, and the puzzles seemed to be variations on having each character stand on a switch to lower a platform for the other one. Thankfully things pick up relatively quickly, and once Dan gains the ability to give Ben a piggyback, the issue of retracing the steps of each character with the other is solved.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s a little strange, then, that Ben and Dan spend a good amount of time entirely separated. You&#8217;d think the game would capitalise on its unique premise, but no. These individual platforming and adventuring sections are well-designed and consistently entertaining but suggest perhaps a lack of confidence in the genre-welding. The mutual Ben\/Dan gameplay is the best and most interesting part of the game, and it would be great to have seen it used consistently.<\/p>\n<aside class=\"picture embed\"><a title=\"Lair of the Clockwork God Review - Screenshot 3 of 4\" href=\"https:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/screenshots\/108230\/large.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"lazy\" src=\"\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg' viewBox='0 0 900 506'%3E%3C\/svg%3E\" width=\"900\" height=\"506\" data-original=\"https:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/screenshots\/108230\/900x.jpg\" alt=\"Lair of the Clockwork God Review - Screenshot 3 of 4\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Captured on Nintendo Switch (Handheld\/Undocked)<\/p>\n<\/aside>\n<p>One thing that Clockwork God is rightly confident in, however, is its humour. It&#8217;s <em>very<\/em> funny and <em>very<\/em> British. On occasion, it strays a little too far into somewhat hypocritical jabs at other games, but the brunt of the joking remains Ben and Dan themselves; both the characters and the real-life people behind them. The ideas behind each different scenario are strong and inventive; you&#8217;ll want to see what they come up with next.<\/p>\n<p>The controls are smartly designed; with Ben, you directly control him but use a context-sensitive menu to have him perform his look\/talk\/pick up actions when he passes the right hot-spots. Dan&#8217;s platforming controls are more traditional, though we experienced a few dropped inputs on jumps, leading to deaths and repeated sections.<\/p>\n<p>Thankfully checkpoints are plentiful, but technical issues seem to be a bit of a plague on the current incarnation of Clockwork God. The title screen promises a forthcoming update, but as the game is now, it frequently chugs and hitches in Dan&#8217;s platforming levels; we experienced full-second freezes every time we passed a checkpoint, sometimes when we were mid-jump. The chugging framerate reduces the freewheeling enjoyment of an early <strong>Sonic<\/strong>-inspired level; a central joke mocking product placement in old platform games (think <strong>Zool<\/strong><strong>&#8216;s<\/strong> Chupa Chup endorsement) is very funny, but difficult to appreciate at what feels like a fluctuating 20 frames per second.<\/p>\n<aside class=\"picture embed\"><a title=\"Lair of the Clockwork God Review - Screenshot 4 of 4\" href=\"https:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/screenshots\/108235\/large.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"lazy\" src=\"\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg' viewBox='0 0 900 506'%3E%3C\/svg%3E\" width=\"900\" height=\"506\" data-original=\"https:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/screenshots\/108235\/900x.jpg\" alt=\"Lair of the Clockwork God Review - Screenshot 4 of 4\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Captured on Nintendo Switch (Docked)<\/p>\n<\/aside>\n<p>Despite these issues \u2013 and taking into account the promised patch \u2013 Lair of the Clockword God is, much like Size Five&#8217;s previous heist-&#8217;em-up <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nintendolife.com\/games\/switch-eshop\/swindle\">The Swindle<\/a><\/strong>, an attractive game to look at. It&#8217;s a huge step up from previous Ben and Dan games in its looks, with great character designs, a good sense of scale and pleasing use of colour to create an atmosphere that doesn&#8217;t outshine the game&#8217;s down-to-earth comedy.<\/p>\n<p>Packed in with the game as a bonus is the visual novel prequel <strong>Devil&#8217;s Kiss<\/strong>, telling the story of how Ben and Dan first met at school. It&#8217;s as silly and breezy as the main game and with plenty of good laughs, so be sure not to miss it.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div id=\"conclusion\">\n<h2 class=\"heading\">Conclusion<\/h2>\n<p>Lair of the Clockwork God is a difficult one to score. What it does well is brilliant \u2013 the humour is great, with constant jokes both quickfire and slow-burn \u2013 but the gameplay is a more complex matter. While it&#8217;s not <em>bad<\/em> by any reasonable metric, it <em>is<\/em> awkward in places. But, then, this is intentional and comes part and parcel with the story, so do we treat it more leniently<em>?<\/em> Is there some hubris in presenting a flawed game, but distracting from said flaws by making them&#8230; <em>kind of the point?<\/em> It&#8217;s a question that not even Nintendo Life can truly answer, but we can put a big number under a review of the game. We do our part.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Captured on Nintendo Switch (Handheld\/Undocked) Ben and Dan are somewhat unsung heroes of gaming. Their first two games, the sadly PC-only Ben There, Dan That! and Time Gentlemen, Please! were extremely traditional Lucasarts-esque point-and-click adventure games, featuring designers Ben Ward and Dan Marshall as \u2013 nominally \u2013 themselves. Eleven years after their time-travelling adventure, Ben [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-117629","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nintendo-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117629","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=117629"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117629\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=117629"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=117629"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=117629"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}