Holly Frustration.
Sure, video games can tell good stories, but the thing that I love most about them is the challenge. I prefer to play on hard difficulties in games, and seek out the most challenging ones like Super Meat Boy and Demon’s Souls/Dark Souls, to see if I can overcome them. I don’t say this to chest beat, only to articulate that I love and enjoy hard games – and also know what’s fair and what isn’t.
HoPiko – a mobile game that came out last year, and is now out on console – is a ‘hyper twitch’ platformer but is not of the typical left-to-right category. Instead, the player can launch their ‘HoPiko’ in any direction with the right stick. When the stick is let go the character will launch in that direction and stick to platform to be repeated. You can also Launch straight up at a much faster speed, which is key in getting around quickly. The player’s goal is to get the HoPiko to the virus that currently affects each and every console on earth.
Platform: Xbox One, PS4, Mobile
Price: $6.99
Price I’d Pay: $2
Each chapter in HoPiko has ‘runs’ which consist of 5 levels and they must be completed all in a row to progress. Messing up on the fifth level will take you back to level one of that run. Each one of the levels has a par time which is pass/fail.
The crazy visuals, pumpin’ music, and unique platforming was extremely enjoyable early on. New mechanics kept things fresh, and I especially loved launching into moving cannons that perform nearly identical to the moving barrels in Donkey Kong Country. I also enjoyed playing the ‘runs’ carefully at first and then revisiting them to get the par time.
But at a certain point, there is no taking it slow. Lasers would kill me if I didn’t move in the first second of a level, and platforms started to explode one second after touching them. On a consistent basis, I would go through a level so fast, die, and have no idea what killed me. Instant restarts in games where players die a lot are good, but this game did a particularly bad job at conveying what was killing me before it reverted back to the beginning.
In some instances, there will literally be no reason for your HoPiko to be dying. Pair these mysterious deaths with an insanely hard game and you have a recipe for a bad time. Some difficulty spikes in the game make it fair to label some levels as having ‘objectively bad’ design.
Saying that the later levels in HoPiko require precision would be a gross understatement – they require absolute perfection in timing and all else. Some may like that about it, but no one will enjoy dying randomly and starting over on levels they’ve completed a dozen times already.
Review copy of game provided by publisher.
