A series that's best unpublished
Whenever a game gets too tough or a little frustrating, I tend to find my mind thinking of 3 things: A) I'm just terrible at the game and will admit. B) My reflexes aren't there and despite knowing how to play, that day inexplicably I'm playing like crap. And C: the game is just poorly designed. While you can improve on A and the "off nights" are common among anyone, it's C that becomes the hard part to narrow down and determine whether it is just you or whether it's the game. Unfortunately in Comic Jumper's case, it's easy to figure out which one it is. Their next game after The Maw and 'Splosion Man, Comic Jumper is ambitious, pretty, hilarious, breaking every wall in the whole building let alone the Fourth Wall and has tons of unlockables and extra content. But in order to see all of that, you'll have to suffer some of the most frustrating and poorly thought out mechanics in awhile and I wouldn't even recommend this if it was on sale.
The game centers on Captain Smiley, a superhero whose line of comics has been getting terrible reception. With the help of Twisted Pixel themselves, Captain Smiley and his abrasive sidekick Star jump into different comic genres in hopes to boost his own popularity by doing guest spots. And that's pretty much the story although I do welcome how crazy it is. While Star is beyond irritating, much of the humor revolves around self-referential humor and most of it tends to work. But then other examples, such as Origami Kid being one of the most offensive stereotypes I've seen in a long time (and I'm not even Asian) or the constant point they make of just how awesome Twisted Pixel is and it falls flat.
The game as a whole is a twin-stick shooter (which you have to hold RT constantly rather than just, you know, point and aim a la Geometry Wars or Super Stardust) and occasional brawler. You transition between the 2 and although it would be nice to have an actual melee button during non-melee sequences, it breaks up the monotony. Although they don't do a good job either since enemies just take way too long to kill and even with upgrades, you're constantly juggling between shooting more than one projectile enemy plus environmental hazards plus the enemies on the ground. For example, in the manga stage, you have to dodge rolling tires, a bus full of kids that throw bombs out the window plus weird bats that fly around. Trying to balance between the multiple projectiles and the fact Captain Smiley is not the most agile or tiniest character makes getting damaged all but a given.
The actual stages are actually well crafted and each genre has its own spin to it, making it stand out. The Nanoc stage recalls the 70's, the manga stage done entirely in black-and-white and played from right to left and the Golden Age era, done in cel-shading. The detail and the ambition is quite striking and there's enough weirdness or cinematic sequences that help bolster the game's energy. But even then, not everything's super. Enemies just get a re-skin, the manga stage makes it incredibly hard to discern what's projectile and what's background and the bosses seem to go on for forever. Not to mention there is absolutely no way to recover health unless you die and start over from a checkpoint and the constant barrage of Gerda, your guide, getting on your case about how you should "stop sucking" and even Captain Smiley himself does it upon death. You'll find you'll end up beating sections just by dying, and starting over full health from the checkpoint which is just poor design.
There is some cool ideas here but they've been absolutely squandered in order to really sell up the style of the game. Whereas the Maw was incredibly simple and 'Splosion Man was fun though a tad repetitive, the only thing redeeming Comic Jumper has nothing to do with the actual game. I'd probably wager a handful of people uninstalled it off their hard drive once they finished it as well. It's okay to admit a game just isn't your thing based on taste or genre but I don't know how I'd ever recommend Comic Jumper's worth a purchase.
