While the early difficulty and repetition made it seem like the fully-formed experience would be a grueling affair, Comic Jumper really grew on me as the levels passed. By the time I was dancing to get Pling-Pling the unicorn to heaven with Star laughing at me, the smile on my face was wide enough to forget any elements that may have detracted from the full experience.
The campaign took us just over six hours to complete with a few more hours spent in the base and on challenge levels, which is plenty of quality content for the price.
This game was a BLAST!! I think the comedy was great, which is lacking in a lot of games and the switch up of game play was a lot of fun. Some parts were hard, but what fun would a game be if it was too easy. Games used to require a lot more skill and focus to play. Comic Jumper brought me back to those days. Twisted Pixel is a company known for their great characters and story, Comic Jumper has both. I look forward to whatever they put out, and hope they bring in some Smiley DLC too.
Hilarious, original, fun, bloated with extra content, and has probably set a new bar for XBLA games. The game itself revolves around a world where comic book heroes are real and the comic book industry resembles that of Hollywood. Captain Smiley's comic has hit an all time low as quality plummets, so does it's readers. His sidekick, Star, doesn't help the situation by giving him a constant flow of a hard case. Not to worry! The generous developer's at Twisted Pixel offer Captain Smiley to regain his fame. To do so, he must begrudgingly guest star in various comics, make plenty of cash, and reignite his career. The plot of Comic Jumper is really good, and without a doubt the main star of the whole game. Despite the game taking place all in a 2D side-scrolling perspective and interactive cut scenes all being in game and having their animations looped as a result, the dialogue and overall still beats much of it's competition both in the game industry and in other medias as well. The humor is bound to make you laugh at some point. Whether it be a fantastic reference to a film or comic, or a another smarky comment from Star, the game aims to make you laugh as much as it can.
Gameplay wise, the game is very fun but unoriginal in this aspect when compared to everything else. It pretty much plays as a classic side scrolling shooter and although the game never gets too difficult, it never gets that easy either. It actually manages to create a really good flow. In fact, the game helps bring about more pacing by sometimes switching into a brawler, or going into a third person perspective where things will either go on-rails and continue the normal style of gameplay or become a QTE event. The on-rails part are the most frequent of the three and offer a different element to the game that's both fun and done in a way where you don't realize you're doing the same thing again and again.
What else does Comic Jumper offer? Over 200 unlockable items. Concept Art, 3D model turnarounds, comic covers and panels, interviews, a blooper reel, animatics, trailers, music from the game without having to go back to that level, gamer pics, a premium theme, avatar clothing items, Splosion' Man DLC, and that's not even all of it. Comic Jumper sets a new XBLA bar for presentation, storytelling, and overall content. Trust me, this is one video game experience you don't want to miss. Twisted Pixel can add another big success to there already impressive resume. Keep them coming guys!
While I found myself disappointed with portions of the game, the sense of humor and green-screen madness on display make Comic Jumper something much, much more than a basic platformer, and it's this aspect of the game that makes it relatively easy to recommend.
Once again Twistel Pixel has made a game with a good sense of humor. The game is repetitive, sure, but because of the appropriate level of difficulty you keep playing it anyway. Comic Jumper offers a good experience, but it just isn't worth 1200 Microsoft Points.
While the dialogue was humorous, albeit annoying at times, it doesn't catapult the title into the area of a worthy recommendation. So, with that being said, I have to say, Comic Jumper is a letdown.
A very fun game, the main character and his sidekick are absolutely hilarious. It might be true than the game play is not the most innovative that you can find, but there's something fresh in that game, a lot of fun, good graphics, good soundtrack, A lot of references to comics and movie universe, for example, the vehicle used by Captain Smiley to travel from a comic to an other is the same as in **** liked very much and It worth its price.
It seems they spent so much time trying to make a funny game that they forgot about the game bit. I wouldn't even mind - but it's not even that funny...
After giving us 'Splosion Man', developers Twisted Pixel began talking about "the game we've always wanted to make". Sounded like a sure thing to me. I was dead wrong. The pitch: a failing comic book super hero and his trusty side kick, rebuild their rep by blasting their way through a multitude of popular comic style worlds (manga, silver age, fantasy etc) cracking jokes and parodying comic book culture as they do it. The reality: The worst twin stick shooter you will ever play. The enemies are over powered and take forever to die, your character is too big on screen to dodge the insane barrage of enemy projectiles. You never get a single weapon change or upgrade, you have the same two pea shooters for the entire 5 hour run. The difference between the comic worlds makes no impact on the dull never changeing run and gun and yawn gameplay. There are some beat 'em up sections in the first few minutes of the game, but they are inconsistently scarce, as if Twist Pixel got board of writing them in. As for the jokes, the humour rarley reaches beyond pop culture reference riddled, self satisfied internet cartoon grade dross. It's borring, frustrating, and well, just not fun.
This game has some genius moments. I love the stats screen song. It's almost worth the price of the game alone. The cut scenes are generally great and the story is fun too. The only let down is the game play - there's not much too it and one you get the hang of the trick that seems to clear most levels it's not that hard either. It's a pity really as there's a lot of imagination and effort in places. Just not where it counts.
The game has a few good jokes, but the gameplay is just not fun for very long. The feedback on whether or not you are hitting things is terrible and the enemies don't really stand out from the backgrounds very well. I really enjoyed the first two Twisted Pixel games, but this one just falls short.