Ah it's Halloween again, a time that to watch scary movies
and run around the neighbourhood with a pumpkin hanging off your penis in order
to scare the little kids. You know, the normal things in life. This means it is
also a time to play all the scary games you own, games that will terrify you so
much your own shit will jump back into your body to hide from it.
Not me however, because I'm such a wimp that I get scared by
eating chocolate, so now that brings me to my annual non scary, completely
pointless Halloween rant of 2013. Now start the drumroll as we build up
completely meaningless tension to announce the game, because it's in the title
anyway.
Adventures of Shuggy
Who'd a guessed it. Anyway, the Adventures of Shuggy is a
platform game, which is probably just as scary to me if I had played a game
about Evil clowns farting spiders out in all set in elevators. I on a whole can't stand platform games. A
platform game is the gaming equivalent of having a movie based around
constantly kicking you in the testicles while you sing whale song. They're just
on a whole, constantly repetitive, anger banks, which granted some people
enjoy, and these are probably the same people who go home every night and have
an elephant give them a footjob. I do not enjoy this.
So I went into the Adventures of Shuggy expecting this same
thing, with the finish of a child-like Lovecraftesque setting, aww look at that
baby Shoggoth with his fangs and cute eyes. And I was kind of right, except
somehow, this was fun for the short time I could actually stand platforming
without wanting to blow my own brains out with a harpoon gun.
The story of the game, not that anybody who plays platform
games cares about story, as they're usually just jammed in there like a penis
inside of an alligator when you tried that kinky sex, is about Shuggy trying to
clear his new castle from whatever haunted denizens it now contains. You do
this by going through many different levels, collecting so many keys along the
way you probably could open the door to the secret Vatican library... Or every
chastity belt in a 1800's pornography.
These levels are where this game stands out to most other
platformers. For one, these levels give you many different ways to go through
them, meaning it is very easy to progress through the game in any way you want,
similar to each stage in Super Meat Boy. The other thing these levels give over
any other platformer is the sheer amount of gimmicks there are for each level
to keep it fresh, it's like a box of chocolate, you never know what you're
going to get, if you want to quote the greatest man who has ever lived and the
now leader of a Mexican Drug Cartel, Forrest Gump.
These different gimmicks include moving about smaller balls
that get scared of you like a jaguar in near some school kids to unlock cages,
rotating the screen in order to move yourself or objects about a level, or
after a set time, using past copies of yourself in order to press down buttons
and progress onwards. While many of these different gimmicks have been used
before, the fact that you have so many of these together to keep it fresh, make
this a much more enjoyable game.
So, did this change my view of Platformers? No, no it did
not, the entire genre still makes me want to shoot anybody dressed in a Super
Mario costume. What it did show is that I can find some games that don't more
me after 5 minutes of playing in this genre, instead letting me play at least
30 minutes before i feel the need to lay down to sleep on a railway track made
out of plutonium.
