Halfbrick Rocket Racing Review

B

What, another Halfbrick game?! You know it. I have to admit - I get a little extra excited when I hear about a new Halfbrick title now. You know that you can expect a polished game from a studio that has several nice titles under its belt already. There's a certain consistency among their games - even though they span several genres now, you can feel the similarities in the design.

In Rocket Racing, Halfbrick introduces another simple-to-understand, but tough-to-master game mechanic. The rockets on your racer (two of them) are controlled by the right and left triggers - so propelling your racer is all about carefully balancing those two rockets to move the direction that you want. Even cooler, using your rockets near a wall will quickly add speed as you push off - and the closer you are to the wall, the more speed you pick up. But don't get too close, because hitting the walls is jarring and will have the opposite effect. Riding along walls, and blasting off them can be extremely exciting when you start pulling it off. Speaking of which...

Let me get something out of the way. I had a really hard time with the controls - the dual trigger blasting was so brutally hard for me, that I had to step away to make sure my index fingers weren't actually breakfast sausages. I eventually started learning to move in the intended direction, but there was simply no way I was going perform well enough to progress. Thankfully, Halfbrick included alternate controls! "Stick" controls allowed me to use the left analog to steer and the trigger to blast - perfect. Now I was getting somewhere. I felt a little lame doing so, but it had to be done.

So now I jumped back into the single player mode, which is essentially a battle against yourself. And a clock I guess. The general idea is to beat each track in the best time possible, earning medals along the way. There are tracks based on getting from A to B, completing a number of laps, or hitting a number of checkpoints - but it's all a race against the tic toc of the clock. I soon learned that to get gold medals (or the elusive "brick" medal), I had to put up some seriously nice times. And if I didn't get golds, I probably wouldn't have enough medals to unlock the later tracks. This really tapped into my competitive nature. Stop me shall you?!

I can honestly say that this one of the most addicting racers I've ever played. Even without human or AI competition, I found myself hooked on trying to shave split-seconds off my times. Certain tracks are a bit unexciting, but others are a blast to whip around trying to ride a centimeter off the walls. Halfbrick must have known just how unforgiving each track can be, and smartly installed a self-destruct button that allows you to quickly blow up and restart a track quickly. You will use this feature many many times. You will curse. You may throw your controller. But you'll also be fist-pumping in your living room when you nail the track you've been attempting for an hour.

I am still working unlocking the later tracks because as mentioned it seems like you need golds on most of the tracks to keep progressing. I have one "brick" medal which was 90% luck but I still cherish it like a functional NES. I will be back to try again.

So the controls may frustrate at first, but I'd recommend sticking with it, or switching the control scheme like I did. There's actually much to appreciate in just how much fine tuning went in to the wall-blasting/sliding mechanic. The main reason I didn't score the game higher is because it really relies on mutliplayer for any real "racing" aspect. As a lover of games like Off Road and RC Pro Am, the lack of AI racers to challenge in a standard race setting leaves you wanting more. While racing the clock (and your sanity) is still a ton of fun, not being able to race others will leave lonely gamers with half of a game.

Give this one a go - see you on the leaderboards!!

Halfbrick Echoes Review

B+

I have to be upfront here and tell you all that I did not purchase the full game on this review. So take that for what you will. Halfbrick decided to limit the demo to only one play-through (aka you can't reply the demo levels more than once - eek) so my playtime is quite limited. I honestly don't like this move and find it a bit aggressive. I understand the need to limit the content, but limiting that content to one play-through... stings. I'll be curious if that has a positive or negative effect on sales. They almost got an "ah f*ck it" sale out of me, but I decided to hold strong. I often like to try a demo a couple times before making a decision.

On a positive note, what I did play was quite cool. This is another well-polished release from Halfbrick and while I was not a large "Halfbrick Blastoff" fan, I was in fact the minority there. It's really fantastic to see Halfbrick's devotion to high quality development on the XBCGs and they are doing a good job of developing a noteworthy brand.

What Halfbrick does best, is something they nailed again here with Echos. It has a very simple, very addicting, pretty innovative mechanic. You basically control a character from the a top-down view and race around collecting crystals while avoiding the baddies that spawn. The catch is that the baddies trace the exact path that you just ran to get the crystal, so you have to plan accordingly. Add in a really interesting array of maps, smooth controls, several game-types (including multiplayer), and lots of power-ups, and you get a really addicting face-paced "free roaming Pac Man." (that was off the cuff, sorry)

One thing I like too is that Halfbrick does put some effort in to creating a theme. This time there is a light story about a woman who "falls" in to her Salvador Dali studies, which then sets the foundation for the various map settings. It's not deep or taken too seriously, but it's there and it helps. I'd actually like to see Halfbrick make an effort to go one step further on this front, because the ideas/themes are fun, but they usually leave a robust story and narrative out.

And I give 1 bonus point for letting the player mess around with the credits. :)

If you like fast, addictive, and straightforward gameplay, then I think I can safely recommend this to you at 200 MP. Halfbrick is establishing itself as a reputable developer that knows how to get things right and deliver fun high quality games. I send my plea to let us play your demo more than once!! (had to twist the knife one more time)

Halfbrick Blast Off Review

C+

So get this. You're in a rocketship with a limited supply of air and fuel and you need to rescue stranded astronauts and then get the hell out of there. Your rocketship is not so much "ship" and mostly "rocket" - or sort of like a potato with a roman candle shoved in it, so maneuvering around space is NOT what might expect. You're fate really depends on how well/poorly you employ the gravity of nearby planets, without actually letting the planet pull you to your fiery death.

Blast Off is a simple well-polished game and I commend the developers for having a vision, seeing it through, and making it look tight. The sounds are fitting and professional, the graphics are simple-but-fun, and the gravitational pull mechanic will either be the perfect challenge or drive you loco. (si mami) Either way it's a pretty neat effect though.

See, it's tough to give a C score to a game that I got hooked on for a good while. Getting used to the gravitational pull of the planets was quite tough, but I did get better and better so I believe that I was hooked on the learning aspect. Some people will really enjoy honing their skills around this mechanic, while others will probably quickly tire, and wonder why they didn't get to blow anything up. I spent so much time hopelessly trying to get back on screen (because I flung myself so far offscreen) that I can imagine many people will hit the 'wtf!' wall and call it a day.

My issue with the 'hone your skills' aspect is that there is really no mechanism built in that can help you actively measure the success of your attempts. The thrust level and angle of blast off are not recorded or measurable, so when you start over, you're prone to make a different mistake rather than tweak your performance and then make incremental progress. For me personally, I would have loved some form of measurement, so that I truly gained knowledge after every blast off. I think some playtesting would have revealed the need for slightly more ship control as well, as to cut down on the aforementioned frustration of blasting way off screen (not fun) or immediately getting pulled in to a planet (death). Of course there's really no punishment and the game encourages a quick restart of any level if you so choose.

There's a good amount of levels to try and while I didn't get too far in to them I can imagine that they get pretty damn tricky from what I experienced early on. (start on 'easy' folks) This game isn't for me personally (at 400 MP) although if I could see myself killing time with it at work if it were on my PC, more than at home. As mentioned, I believe that this fits a certain type of gamer who enjoys the addiction to conquering a challenging mechanic. If that sounds like you, don't stop get it get it.