"Double Cross is an adventure-game style investigation crossed with an intense action platformer. Players are also free to customize Zahra’s play style in order to become the top RIFT agent."
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Not very complex and not too long, but overall a fun experience with some fun characters
This game bills itself as a mix between 2D platforming action and some adventure game type mystery solving, but it largely focuses on the former to its detriment.
The platforming itself is certainly fine. The grapple move is quite fun, especially as it has the nice touching of slowing down time to help you aim. Each level also has its handful of specific gimmicks to play around with, and there's some parts that feel very fluid to get through with all your tricks. Searching for goodies is pretty fun too, and the way they feed into unlocking perks to use is cool. The main issue I had with the gameplay was that combat was pretty boring; you just end up mowing through easy enemies (sometimes in waves) with basic combos in a way that would feel at home in a second-rate sixth gen 3D platformer.
And yet, I still feel pretty disappointed by how the other half of the game went nowhere. You need to assemble case files to incriminate the head baddies in each of the three planets, but with maybe one exception, each clue you need is in its corresponding planet. Sometimes you need to talk to someone to get the full details on a clue, but it doesn't expand beyond "I need to hack into a disk, let me talk to the catgirl whose only personality trait besides cat is hacking into anything". And then once you've got everything, the game just lets you submit it to get on to the boss fight without any real deduction required. The whole "dimension cop solving mysteries" angle feels mostly like padding.
While the narrative itself ends up feeling pretty cliche and simple, I thought the settings were nice. The whole setup of having the alternate Earths leads to some solid variety. In addition, the characters were nice to interact with; while they're pretty simple, there was just something interesting about seeing what they had to say about various situtations.
Overall, though, I don't think the game ever really gets past "fine". This game ends up squandering a lot of the intrigue that could have come with its whodunnit plot, and what's left is mostly just an alright platformer. It's certainly enjoyable, but pretty underwhelming.
The platforming itself is certainly fine. The grapple move is quite fun, especially as it has the nice touching of slowing down time to help you aim. Each level also has its handful of specific gimmicks to play around with, and there's some parts that feel very fluid to get through with all your tricks. Searching for goodies is pretty fun too, and the way they feed into unlocking perks to use is cool. The main issue I had with the gameplay was that combat was pretty boring; you just end up mowing through easy enemies (sometimes in waves) with basic combos in a way that would feel at home in a second-rate sixth gen 3D platformer.
And yet, I still feel pretty disappointed by how the other half of the game went nowhere. You need to assemble case files to incriminate the head baddies in each of the three planets, but with maybe one exception, each clue you need is in its corresponding planet. Sometimes you need to talk to someone to get the full details on a clue, but it doesn't expand beyond "I need to hack into a disk, let me talk to the catgirl whose only personality trait besides cat is hacking into anything". And then once you've got everything, the game just lets you submit it to get on to the boss fight without any real deduction required. The whole "dimension cop solving mysteries" angle feels mostly like padding.
While the narrative itself ends up feeling pretty cliche and simple, I thought the settings were nice. The whole setup of having the alternate Earths leads to some solid variety. In addition, the characters were nice to interact with; while they're pretty simple, there was just something interesting about seeing what they had to say about various situtations.
Overall, though, I don't think the game ever really gets past "fine". This game ends up squandering a lot of the intrigue that could have come with its whodunnit plot, and what's left is mostly just an alright platformer. It's certainly enjoyable, but pretty underwhelming.