The action is so fast and engaging that it made me enjoy a randomized, chaotic platformer, which was something I’d previously thought impossible. Whether these problems were intended or not, they make the experience far more frustrating and unfair than it should be, and I can only hope they’ll be patched out at some point in the future.Ĭlustertruck is admirably insane. Even the developers’ own promotional videos show off the constant use of slow time. If that’s the case, the developers should have fixed the bugs or left the feature out, since the game is nearly unplayable without the ability to take a breath and fine-tune jumps. It’s possible that many of these issues are caused by the time-slowing button, and the item description even warns that using it can screw up Clustertruck‘s worlds. Restarting a level a couple of times always solves the problem, but it’s extremely frustrating to get through thirty seconds of white-knuckle platforming only to discover that the game hasn’t held up its end. In another level, cannons located far below me were supposed to fire trucks up into the air so I could jump on them in sequence, but half the time the trucks would hit the edge of a platform and ricochet back down to into the abyss, with me following quickly behind as I’d been robbed of my boost. After an hour or two I’d come to accept that a jump that worked in one attempt wouldn’t work on the next because the trucks behaved differently, but sometimes the randomness gets out of hand.įor example, every level requires the player to ride a truck to the finish line, but some levels have jumps which the trucks fail to clear, rendering them unbeatable. The fact that I had to claw and scrape through some of the more complicated levels even with superpowers turned on illustrates just how random and capricious the chaos of Clustertruck can be. I managed to beat Clustertruck, but it was only by leaning heavily on my jetpack and time-dilation abilities. Others are more practical, and even vitally necessary if players want to make it past the first few levels of world two. Some are simply cosmetic or jokey - one makes trucks spin like a kickflipped skateboard whenever the player jumps off them. Save up enough points, and players can purchase a wide variety of gameplay tweaks. Skills alone won’t be enough for most players to get through the game, however - they’ll need assistance in the form of special unlockable abilities.Īt the end of every level, the player is awarded points based on their time, and whether they pulled off any ‘stunts’ such as big airtime or jumping off of a truck while it was in mid-air. By the time giant cannons are firing trucks at the player, they’ll have all the skills down so pat that it won’t even faze them. The first area focuses on riding trucks on uneven terrain, the second shows how to move from one herd of trucks to the next, the third explains how to manage obstacles, and so forth. The worlds also do a great job of teaching one set of skills at a time. Each world has its own visual style, musical theme, and distinctive types of traps and challenges. I was shocked to discover that yes, apparently they can.Ĭlustertruck has 90 levels split up into nine different worlds. I honestly wondered how the developers could possibly keep this wacky conceit going - it’s entertaining and all, but can dozens of levels be crafted out of such a thin premise? If each level plays differently each time it loads, who’s more responsible for how the level plays out - the person with the controller, or the random number generator responsible for the level’s behavior? Needless to say, I had major misgivings about Clustertruck going in.Ī first-person platformer set in a world with far more trucks than there are roads to carry them, Clustertruck takes the cowboy fantasy of running atop a herd of stampeding cattle and updates it to the modern age as the player bounds from one tractor-trailer to the next, always barreling towards a finish line. Just imagine how unplayable Super Meat Boy would be if the buzzsaws randomly moved wherever they felt like instead of keeping to a set pattern?įew virtual accomplishments compare to executing perfect timing, dodging projectiles and clambering up ledges in challenging platformers, but chaotic platforming steals those moments of triumph from players. When developers then add random elements - chaos, essentially - the core of the experience is at risk. Standard platformers generally ask players to learn specific rules about how their world works, and how to exploit them for the cleanest possible line through a level. Satisfaction is a hard thing to come by in chaotic platformers. LOW Failing a level because the trucks couldn’t make it to the end. HIGH Flying through three sets of gears to just barely reach the goal sign.
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