Color me surprised. I went into Beetlejuice expecting complete garbage. My only experience with the game being the scathing review by the AVGN. Having now played it myself, I agree that it is a game with many flaws. Even so, playing through it was not as terrible as I expected. Still not very good though.
You play as the titular Beetlejuice, who you might remember as the movie's villain. A master of scares who loves nothing more than to frighten the living. Throughout 5 levels you regularly alternate between 2D platforming and top-down puzzle levels.
The 2D segments are mostly straightforward. There is some exploration to be done, but the path towards boss fights is always fairly clear with few distractions. A key issue here is that enemies are very inconsistent. Some you can jump on for points, others will damage you when you try. You only find out which is which by trial & error. Like you might expect a flying skull with helicopter blades on top to damage you, but no. You can jump on those just fine. A small bug skittering around on the floor though? Can't jump on that mate. Those'll kill you.
It puts you in a mindset where its best to avoid enemies entirely, which does make for engaging platforming segments. Hopping from platform to platform while dodging enemies is a good time. The controls are appropriately responsive while the levels are well-designed. What frustrated me though is that Beetlejuice shirks the usual platformer logic in annoying ways. The screen scrolls along with you, but only when you touch the ground. This means you might have to jump up into the void while guessing where the next platform might be. At the same time, dropping down is not allowed at all. Even when you know there's solid ground just off-screen, if you touch the bottom edge its Game Over. You have to inch your way down instead, which is especially annoying in vertical stages where you may have to backtrack.
A unique gimmick are the so-called Scares. These are special transformations that you can find or buy, which transform Beetlejuice into an alternate form. There all kinds of monsters available, but the differences are hard to appreciate. Every form is just an different look that allows you to fire projectiles, with little else in the way of utility. Some forms let you fire more often before reverting back to Beetlejuice and there is the Bird form that lets you jump higher. That's it, really.
You buy Scares at the shops scattered about the levels, for which you need points. These are awarded when you defeat enemies, but that's rare. Instead you gain most of your points from stomping beetles. These spawn endlessly from their little hiding holes and you just stand around and stomp on them. You need thousands of points and most beetles only give you 10. It feels like blatant padding and isn't fun in the slightest.
Most platforming levels then conclude with a boss-fight, which are also characterized by laziness. They are all slow-moving foes that fire projectiles at you, which you defeat by firing back at them. Each hit pushes them back and you win once they touch the rightmost wall. It doesn't sound bad, but the design is very slapdash. You can just jump over the boss for example and completely freeze the fight as a result. They can't turn around and you can't damage them from behind, so you both just stand there awkwardly.
The top-down segments fare little better. In fact, describing them as puzzle stages earlier oversells the actual experience. They are simplistic room-to-room stages where you defeat enemies and find keys to open doors. Sometimes the door is blocked by a character from the movie instead. In that case you have to find an item related to them so they'll move for you. Whatever you need is never more than a room away.
Enemies are somehow even more annoying to deal with in these top-down levels. You'll walk into a room and 12 flies will just start bouncing around the screen, trying to hit you. You don't use your Scares in these levels either. Instead you collect potions, which spawn some kind of ghost. This thing too bounces around the screen and damages enemies whenever the two happen to collide. There is no tact to it all. You just throw them and hope for the best.
Some enemies can only be defeated with special items, which also just bounce back & forth when used. You have to continuously grab the item and throw it again, or hope that enemies will eventually run into it themselves. Making this even more of a pain is that you don't have an inventory. Only the last item you picked up is usable. This also means that when you've thrown your weapon, trying to catch it again might result in you using the next item in line instead. And since you don't have a current use for it, Beetlejuice will dump it on the ground. And then trigger a dialogue sequence when he picks it up again a second later. It's yet another clumsy bit of design that makes the game feel sloppy.
There isn't much else to these levels. You indirectly fight enemies and solve barebones puzzles, sometimes you have to solve a small maze. That's about it. There aren't even any boss-fights for them. The only other hazard are the floating doors that sometimes chase you. When one touches you, it sends you to the "Penalty" level. Basically a small screen with a sandworm on it that you must defeat before going back to where you were. This is a nice shoutout to the movie and certainly has novelty , but does become annoying when it keeps happening. The doors have a large hitbox and the stages are often narrow, making it difficult to avoid being hit.
Beetlejuice has a lot going against it. Its a sloppy game with inconsistent design and gimmicks that largely backfire. Still, it controls well and the levels are fun to play through when they let you just focus on the platforming. There are dozens of platformers that I'd sooner recommend, but it's also not the worst I've ever played. 2D platforming addicts could certainly consider giving it a try.
No comments:
Post a Comment