it's a rarity in a game where you're presented a playfield that you can actually traverse completely, and yet jumping flash nailed it all the way back in 1995. at this point in history it would've been normal to favor punitive over expansive design, but the developers here gave the player three giant jumps, infinite ammo, and a save system all of which give complete freedom in how objectives are approached (much to some contemporary reviewers' chagrin). each stage consists of obtaining multiple jetpacks strewn across the level, the ground of which exists as narratively-justified floating chunks of earth and metal. enemies wander about in the vicinity paying little attention to you until the endgame, leaving to search for each jetpack your only true objective.

with excessively permissive traversal mechanics and layout design comes a dearth of bespoke challenges for the player to undertake. it's not that the game is too easy, but that the lack of guardrails hinder attempts to adequately test the player. the game gestures at occasional constraints - ie conveyor belts that require the player to find their starting point in order to reach objects at their end point - but these rarely extend beyond merely requiring the player to jump to the right place. granted this is not a poor decision, as a gauntlet of precision platforming would likely have ended up frustrating even with the generous jump height and conspicuous drop shadow. however, I felt that the larger levels had many underutilized areas that were unnecessary given how easily they were skipped by taking other paths. more often than not these levels consist of stumbling about until the poor draw distance finally reveals the next target.

bosses are thankfully forgiving in their damage output and projectile uses considering that the poor robbit you command utilizes tank controls and thus can not strafe. even when they took potshots at me I never felt like I wasn't able to maneuver around to some extent and avoid them. presumably these become more difficult in the "extra" stages which repeat the levels with different object arrangements, but I didn't feel the need to go through this mode after already playing each of the stages once. those playing on psp as I did may notice frequent frame dips, although from watching longplays it seems like the psx original has a much more consistent framerate. probably time for me to admit the psx emulator on psp leaves a lot to be desired...