I want to love this game so bad, because it IS fun and I see all of the neat momentum shmovement you can pull off with it. And I don't even mind that the controls are weird and jank. Because this game overall has the energy and vibes of a slightly obscure early PS2 platformer with how it's trying something completely weird and different with the analog sticks and does a lot different like the platformers of old that did stuff before platformers had a lot of their conventions set in stone.
The first half or so of this game is a lot of fun, especially gratifying to get your speed up and blitz through levels. And there's a high skill ceiling to the game too, so it's probably gonna be a lot of fun to see speedruns of it. Just sadly I feel like the last third or so of the game starts to get too precise for how loosey-goosey the controls are and how easy it is the overshoot jumps. Also maybe just me but I have never had such an abysmal time with depth perception in a game before.
The bosses were interesting at first - I liked how the first two were platforming challenges more than they were just straight up fights, but then they go back to just doing regular fights and all the bosses got incredibly boring after that.
And boy howdy did I find my fair share of glitches. I've gotten trapped on geometry where Penny's just stuck in a perpetual falling state so I had to reset to the last checkpoint. I've had Penny pull herself into a block, causing the camera to launch itself into the void and taking a full minute to catch back up to me. I barely graze the deathplane water in world 2 and it counted as dying even though Penny was visibly walking on land. I've gotten stuck inside the horn tunnels in the final world. The Puppet Penny race apparently has a checkpoint over a pit so I got dropped into it until I ran out of lives. I died during the phase transition cutscene of the Judge Rufus fight more than once. And I kept straight up falling through the loop-de-loop in the final boss. Jeez.
I don't want to give this game a 5/10 cause I see what it's got and it's good. Just good lord it's given me a ton of grief.
The first half or so of this game is a lot of fun, especially gratifying to get your speed up and blitz through levels. And there's a high skill ceiling to the game too, so it's probably gonna be a lot of fun to see speedruns of it. Just sadly I feel like the last third or so of the game starts to get too precise for how loosey-goosey the controls are and how easy it is the overshoot jumps. Also maybe just me but I have never had such an abysmal time with depth perception in a game before.
The bosses were interesting at first - I liked how the first two were platforming challenges more than they were just straight up fights, but then they go back to just doing regular fights and all the bosses got incredibly boring after that.
And boy howdy did I find my fair share of glitches. I've gotten trapped on geometry where Penny's just stuck in a perpetual falling state so I had to reset to the last checkpoint. I've had Penny pull herself into a block, causing the camera to launch itself into the void and taking a full minute to catch back up to me. I barely graze the deathplane water in world 2 and it counted as dying even though Penny was visibly walking on land. I've gotten stuck inside the horn tunnels in the final world. The Puppet Penny race apparently has a checkpoint over a pit so I got dropped into it until I ran out of lives. I died during the phase transition cutscene of the Judge Rufus fight more than once. And I kept straight up falling through the loop-de-loop in the final boss. Jeez.
I don't want to give this game a 5/10 cause I see what it's got and it's good. Just good lord it's given me a ton of grief.