The substantial port of an otherwise solid puzzle platformer.
When Dokuro launched on the Vita last year, it didn’t make too many waves in the gaming world. After all, it was a modest puzzle platformer, built from the ground-up for the Vita.
It wasn’t really meant to be an “all-in triple ‘A’” system seller, and as such it went on to claim mostly positive reviews and faded from people’s memories.
Unsatisfied with being forgotten and perhaps a bit underappreciated, the developers at Gungho decided to take their chances on the PC market, but end up falling flat due to a rather underwhelming attempt at porting the game.
While the chalk drawn aesthetics are charming, it looked much better in its intended resolution on the Vita screen.
MSRP: $9.99
Platforms: PC, PSV
Demo Availability: N/A
Played: 7-8 hours
Dokuro is a simple puzzle platformer, where the majority of the objectives revolve around escorting a damsel in distress to safety.
The who, why and where isn’t really important, considering the scope of the story doesn’t really play a great role, but rather just set the stage for levels filled with dastardly traps and enemies to overcome.
The puzzles themselves are mostly well designed, and while not entirely difficult require some outside-the-box thinking, which I can always appreciate.
Judging strictly from the point of the game itself, I would say that it’s an above average puzzle platformer, and well worth checking out for the fans of the genre.
However, all my major issues stem from the rather terrible porting job this title as received on its way to the PC.
First off, there’s no controller support, and the keys cannot be changed in any way. This wouldn’t really be an issue if they were bound to keys that make sense in the first place, but they aren’t.
I mean, what other game uses the spacebar as the key for going into the options menu?!
There’s also the use of the mouse as an alternative to the using the touchpad of the Vita, but switching between using the keyboard to move around and then using the mouse to draw something felt awkward and unwieldy.
These are all the options you can fiddle around with.
Then there’s the graphics, which suffered noticeably from being blown up out of its native resolution, and constant screen tearing whenever there were things moving on the screen.
This was a title that was built to be played on the Vita, and it needed a lot more attention in the way the controls and display resolution were handled, but it felt like very little care went into porting this title.
It’s really quite unfortunate considering I actually already own the game on the Vita, and I feel as though I was forced to suffer through a worse version of the game for the review.
Still, I suppose it’s good that the audience that can experience Dokuro has increased substantially from the Vita’s limited player base.
I just wish that it could have been on the definitive version of the game.
Review copy of game provided by publisher.
