Procedural generation goes bonk, followed by other four-letter words.
http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/review/46773/clustertruck-switch-review
One of the Switch’s biggest supporters is tinyBuild, and when they held their first “Hello, Switch” event last month, the game I was most excited for was Clustertruck. Outside of our own channel, it’s one of the few games I actually cared about watching streams for. Having played the final product on Switch, I can safely say that it’s a solid game, but if I attempted to stream it myself I would be thrown off of YouTube for excessive swearing.
Clustertruck is a first-person jumping game. The jumper at your controls isn’t named, but their job is simple: reach a marked goal by jumping across a series of 18-wheeler trucks. Landing on any other surface—or hitting obstacles ranging from wooden barricades to lasers—is an automatic fail of the mission.
Nine worlds with ten levels each (and some bonuses) make up the full package. Points are awarded after the end of each level based on completion time, as well as any stunts like large jumps performed along the way. Earning enough points allows you to purchase upgrades, like grappling hooks or the ability to spawn a truck on the field. The least expensive upgrade, the double jump, was honestly good for most of the game, and I felt like I wasted my points when I bought the ability to freeze trucks.
The controls are simple: the left stick moves, A jumps and restarts the mission if a failure happens, and ZR dashes. The restarts come fast and furious, as the truck paths are randomly generated, and runs of no hope happen a lot. One particularly nasty level, 3-10 (the last level of the winter-themed world) has a sadly realistic treatment of 18-wheelers on sheets of ice. My attempts before being done with the level measured in the hundreds, and I was well over the century mark before I even saw the banner that signaled the end of the stage. The “LEVEL FAILED” sign was a constant in my life for the better part of two sessions. A few tricky levels still lingered before and after that, and clearing them left me feeling a sense of accomplishment. But 3-10, with its trucks skidding off the road and simple wooden obstacles placed just so, broke me.
I did hear of severe crashes in the course of my time with the game, but was never able to replicate them. I ran into a solitary crash while flipping through the menus, but for the most part the game ran fine. Landfall and tinyBuild are working on a patch to resolve the crashes as well as some issues with vertical camera control. The engine focuses on the trucks, so the backgrounds are simple and functional. The music isn’t all that memorable though, with the constant restarting, I did appreciate that the music didn’t also restart at the same time.
My personal frustration with Clustertruck shouldn’t take away from the game. Landfall and tinyBuild made a good game, even if there were times that I thought they’d owe me either a Switch or a TV. And I had plenty of occasions in which I nailed a tricky series of jumps or managed to overcome a tough level and felt amazing. The run eventually comes, and if you can tolerate not knowing when that is, Clustertruck could be for you.
Topic: Clustertruck (Switch) Review (Read 1596 times)
