Platform games are popular throughout the year and at Christmas, with so much free time around the home this is one of the most popular times around. Although Christmas can’t last forever, the games which appear around this time can be total gems. One such game is Ali The Penguin Christmas Edition.
In this platformer you play the special agent of the Antarctic armed with a snowball bazooka. In all honesty the tag line for this game could be ‘His name is Ali, Ali the Penguin… License to Krill’, as he makes a pretty convincing spy who would give James Bond a run for his money in being the coolest crime fighting agent.
With simple controls (left, right, jump and fire) you have to navigate your way round various perilous and treacherous terrains in an attempt to eliminate the enemy in your way and collect the items as you go. Of course with it being Christmas themed, you have crackers, candy canes and other presents to gather on your rounds. Levels are pretty short and quick but certainly not without their tricky parts. Whether it’s shooting an armed polar bear (who clearly is lost and cranky being so far away from home), to what appear to be pigeons who’ll try to drop objects onto you from above. As we all know, penguins can’t fly, but as Ali will demonstrate, they don’t need to with their acrobatic jumping abilities. Combining this with his rather big bazooka, it’s fairly safe to say, I’m glad he’s on our side!
Now it may appear odd playing this game out of season but to me, this doesn’t really detract from the game in any way. Let’s face it, we’ve all played platform games which have odd objects to collect so it doesn’t really matter and in some ways it makes me feel quite warm and fuzzy inside seeing a kick-ass penguin with a festive red hat bouncing around the screen and blasting away bad guys with a snowball.
The one thing that makes this game more tricky and unnecessarily so is the controls. Unfortunately the designers have made it so that rather than simply left and right, your character points his bazooka into the sky in between facing one way or the other which means you have to ensure Ali’s facing the right way when bouncing from platform to platform. This clearly hampers the platforms which disintegrate after a brief moment and will test your reflexes and patience in equal quantities. Also the bazooka you use is a little slow in firing, making it a little fudgy and unresponsive when trying to eliminate a moving target.
In a wintery summary (pardon the pun) this is a very inoffensive and entertaining time killer to put a smile on your face at any time of year. Whether you’re waiting to open presents and recovering from too much turkey or whilst relaxing on a beach somewhere, you’ll be challenged, entertained and rewarded by this little black and white fella.
Rating 86%
Positives
Festive all year round
Entertaining and certainly gives several hours of fun and frustration
Quite addictive
Negatives
Controls are pretty fiddly to get the hand of
Fairly same-y throughout
Judging jumps correctly and safely landing on platforms seems tricky (despite landing on the platform you fall straight through it! – possible glitch)
No comments:
Post a Comment