Maybe making 3d platformers is kinda hard?

But for the Sonic Mania team, they make it look so easy. Penny's Big Rig Racing is a bit of an anomaly for me. On one hand, there's a ton of stuff to praise in this game. So much so, that I could put this in my list of one of the best 3D platformers I've ever played. On the other hand, the game is ROUGH. And I mean, this game needs like 6 more months of polish type rough. I tend to be a bit more lenient when comes to indie developers, but when glitches and weird visual mess-ups start to hinder my experience, I feel like I have to incorporate into how I feel about the game. With this preface, I can now ramble about Penny's Biggie Bag.

The movement in this game rivals Mario Odyssey. That is the most praise that I think I can give to a 3D platformer. This game is about moving! Moving in style, moving in grace, moving with momentum, and chaining dashes, swings, and rolling on your Yo-Yo to create your own path in each level. This game, although it does not play like Sonic at all, reminds me of what I like about the older Sonic games: momentum-based speed is peak! Every time I do a dash into a momentum-filled swing, to boost myself, followed up by a wheelie on an edge, I'm a kid again: spin-dashing in Sonic Advance, watching Sonic zoom through the screen, to blast off in the air with not a care in the world. Penny's Big Bonanza knows how good it feels, and captures it with every inch of its level design. The levels all feel like suggestions rather than paths in this game, clearly motivating players to experiment as much as possible with the movement mechanics. Entire sections can be skipped through clever use of the yo-yo's swing and a wall jump; insane amounts of speed can be gained by a well-timed wheelie on a ramp, leading to new paths to uncover. There is no correct path. It's up to how well you can manipulate the system to get to where you need to be. There's something special about going against the "intended" path in these games, and being rewarded for it. The developers recognize that their levels are supposed to be motivators for creativity, rather than hard-coded progression lines, and I can't praise them enough for putting that control in the player's hands. There's always something worth trying, and the sheer amount of ideas they put out to compliment the movement mechanics heighten quite a lot in the end game. Unfortunately, this makes the first few worlds feel lacking, but never boring. It's like they were a bit afraid to really show off how creative this game can get, so they went with more common themes and ideas that you'd see your standard 3D Platformer. At the half point, they throw that all away, introducing some rad environmental designs, and just excellent sandboxes to Tony Hawk your way through. It also helps that the soundtrack is unsurprisingly fire. You go from a Circus-y pop soundtrack, to rock/techno, to all sorts of mixing and matching to make such a funky soundtrack. I mean, even the main menu theme is undeniably sick, so you know the soundtrack is good. My favorite song is Palace Sneaktime Swing. It's the synthy-swing mix combined with the bombastic horns that just warms my heart. Tee Lopes never disappoints.

With the above praise, it makes it seem like Penny's Big Ole Adventure must be my GOTY, and a perfect evolution of the 3D Platforming genre. In my heart, yeah. But, the roughness can't go unnoticed. I don't know if I like how this game looks. I like how the environments transform throughout the game, each level feeling like an insane dream. There's never any visual clutter, and the art style is unique. However, some of the environments' colors and designs can start to feel same-y. By the end of the game, a lot of levels started to blend together in my mind, especially within each world. I had to question if I hit Retry by accident on certain levels, only to quickly notice that I had progressed to the next level. In addition, the character models are kinda ugly? Sometimes? I don't know if it's the lighting or just how the backdrops make them stand-out, but they look kinda like unfinished rigs of a character. I understand that the game is going for a more minimalistic clay-like look, but it's not stylized enough like Jet Set Radio or detailed enough like Mario. It's this weird in-between that just comes off as unfinished for me. It's odd. And it's not always like this. The 2D animation is beautiful, and I wish they leaned heavier into that expressive style, but you only have so much time. The combo system as well, is a great motivating factor for mastering the movement, but I don't think the game really adheres to its rules? For one, there are too many combo enders in levels, where in order to progress you pretty much need to end your combo (or glitch your way through). It is fun trying to find creative ways to keep a combo going, but it's weird that you kinda have to fight the game rather than master it just to have a combo stay consistent. The spin twirl is far too inconsistent for it to be a reliable combo extender. And finally, some environments have some strange object properties leading to combo's randomly dropping. This leads to my biggest complaint. The lack of polish. This game is buggy. Not your average one-off funny glitch-buggy, but your clipping through objects, almost getting soft-locked, and Penny floating on objects forever type buggy. Every level was something new. I had to question if how I interacted with things was just how the game was designed, or if it was indeed a bug. My favorite is Penny's weird tumble animation. It will consistently happen on anything cylindrical, as I think she's programmed to loop on these object's maybe? You'll walk into them and lose all control of your character, as Penny drifts to the side, spinning in mid-air. Additionally, I've fallen out of the map too many times to count. Some collision just doesn't exist yet. I have no doubt these will be patched eventually, as the developers have already put out 3 patches for the game, but it doesn't change how much it impacted me. But, I know speedrunners must be having a blast, so more power to them.

The bosses are okay. Some are good, but they are mostly okay.

Penny's Prison Break will be a hidden gem, no doubt. It packs a punch with its charm-filled, and whimsical character and environmental design, and it knocks you out with its near-perfect momentum-based goodness. It just needs a loooot more time to polish up its right hook, and it could or maybe will be a contender for one of the best 3D platformers out there. Do not pass on this game

8/10 :)

Looks and sounds pretty rad, and the skating is great (when the camera isn't flipping around and killing your momentum), but following a trail of breadcrumbs while the main character simultaneously patronises themselves and you is just not my idea of fun :/

Also the combat is completely unnecessary, wish they'd been brave enough to strip it out completely.

Also also tiny text and no resize option.

Okay I'm done.

On paper, this had everything it needed to be a breezy time carried by its gorgeous art design, smooth skating mechanics and a fairly contained and manageable scope. It can be fun to quickly go from place to place and play around with gravity whenever it comes up, but it's held back by unnecessary creative decisions. The annoying/confused voice direction doesn't keep much interest over a played-out narrative, and the general lack of variety/mood escalation really drag it down.

There's slight variety as far as the size and shape of the not-Colossi at the end of each zone, but the approach and method in fighting them never changes between hitting the little needles on their backs. It's great for conveying the scope in conjunction with the art design, but only does so much to remain interesting when repeated six times. The music also fails to convey a distinct mood for each one; the game's soundtrack is pretty soothing synthwave for a lot of it that fits the vibe and gets slightly more intense at a boss but lacks emotional tone to make any key moments stand out. The game even denies you the satisfaction of toppling a boss by instantly blasting you into the mind dimension every time one is defeated. Doing this wouldn't interfere with the theoretically somber tone, as Shadow of the Colossus forced you to see the weight of your final strike as each beast fell; Solar Ash feels like it just wants to move on.

There are some good ideas I'd hope to see Sonic pick up in the future, a particularly good one being using the colored plants to open doors and rail-lines before time runs out or managing the platforms around radiation pools to avoid dying from too much exposure, but even with its pretty environments there's not much to break up the gameplay formula being repeated six and a half times over.

Lastly there's the storytelling. For some reason even though the art direction would suggest the world's design itself can carry the narrative like the Ori duology, there's pretty constant chatter from the main character Rei, who is directed to sound angrier and more resigned than desperate as the narrative wants her to seem. Her relation to Cyd was adequately done if a bit detached, but the side characters you run into or hear logs from feel like they were from a different game entirely. There's a quirky, almost cartoony way of speaking that feels at odds with this game stylistically in a way that seems uncanny. Characters like the captain and his various crews with their acting wouldn't be out of place in a kids network comedy show.

I was thinking of ways to convey a lot of the game's story ideas and other indie games already showed me better ways of accomplishing each element of its narrative delivery. If the game was more like Furi, where your protagonist's only verb of communication was their core gameplay (in that case, combat, in this case, moving) in contrast with everyone around them, that would've conveyed a more thorough emotional tone. I dogged on Neon White for its writing, but it was at least wholly separated from its slick game feel and did actually convey interesting storytelling through character-based stages while Rei's unnecessary chirping is in conjunction with playing. There are also audio logs, which felt much more interesting in a game like Outer Wilds because they were slowly unraveling a vast mystery with a lot of turns which worked alongside what the main character was doing in slowly exploring a galaxy. Here, on top of the tonal issue you can't even listen to them while running despite them being baked into the world, which feels like an oversight for the focus on constant flow.

Solar Ash had plenty of potential to convey a strong feeling and a generally swift game feel that carries it through its brief runtime, but it just came off as distracting and at odds with itself. I wish it embraced its strong stylistic elements and speed more than it does.