Playing Through My Evercade Collection Part 12: Oliver Twins Collection
I grew up with several Dizzy games on my Amiga so coming to this is a mixed bag. As a whole this has aged... ok. For those who dont know what Dizzy games are, its essentially a mix of platforming and adventure point and click item puzzles and for the most part its decent with a lot of caveats that stop it from being really great.
Like the platforming itself isnt bad, but it takes some real time to get used to. Dizzy is quite heavy and the jumping mechanics has a lot of inertia being it, so you need some runup to make any real distance and Dizzy himself on landing often rolls on impact, making precise jumping rather difficult. Like I said, its tricky but doable.
The point and click puzzles fit a similar vein, mostly consisting of rather basic 'bring item to x' to solve things and get access to new places. The problem comes with Dizzy's rather sparse inventory space, he can only hold 3 items, also rather annoyingly (though this is more an issue with the NES edition of this), in order to cycle through items, you need to drop and pick up each successive item to cycle it to the back of the item menu. Its just clunky and given theres a LOT of items in the game, you'll often be needing to cycle through or dump items in easy to reach places. It all amounts to quite a bit of tedious back and forth with really doesnt help the game.
The game also has a habit of throwing rather mean 'Gotchas' at you, the occasional full on death trap, butterflies that reverse controls right next to pit edges, ants that damage you but you can barely see them and foreground elements that sometimes hide things. This all isn't stuff that breaks the game but it does cause what should be an enjoyable little romp into a more annoying time.
I'm also docking points for the.... soundtrack? I don't know why but the NES music is just the worst, its loud, irritating and often just shifts into LAA LAA LAA YAY music at a drop of a hat, often for no reason.
Ultimately once you get used to the platforming and the nature of the game, it isnt too bad but I feel theres better Dizzy games I could play.
I grew up with several Dizzy games on my Amiga so coming to this is a mixed bag. As a whole this has aged... ok. For those who dont know what Dizzy games are, its essentially a mix of platforming and adventure point and click item puzzles and for the most part its decent with a lot of caveats that stop it from being really great.
Like the platforming itself isnt bad, but it takes some real time to get used to. Dizzy is quite heavy and the jumping mechanics has a lot of inertia being it, so you need some runup to make any real distance and Dizzy himself on landing often rolls on impact, making precise jumping rather difficult. Like I said, its tricky but doable.
The point and click puzzles fit a similar vein, mostly consisting of rather basic 'bring item to x' to solve things and get access to new places. The problem comes with Dizzy's rather sparse inventory space, he can only hold 3 items, also rather annoyingly (though this is more an issue with the NES edition of this), in order to cycle through items, you need to drop and pick up each successive item to cycle it to the back of the item menu. Its just clunky and given theres a LOT of items in the game, you'll often be needing to cycle through or dump items in easy to reach places. It all amounts to quite a bit of tedious back and forth with really doesnt help the game.
The game also has a habit of throwing rather mean 'Gotchas' at you, the occasional full on death trap, butterflies that reverse controls right next to pit edges, ants that damage you but you can barely see them and foreground elements that sometimes hide things. This all isn't stuff that breaks the game but it does cause what should be an enjoyable little romp into a more annoying time.
I'm also docking points for the.... soundtrack? I don't know why but the NES music is just the worst, its loud, irritating and often just shifts into LAA LAA LAA YAY music at a drop of a hat, often for no reason.
Ultimately once you get used to the platforming and the nature of the game, it isnt too bad but I feel theres better Dizzy games I could play.