Written by: Ian

 

 

 

A combination of cutseyplatformer and block-breaking madness, is "Raskulls" another indie darling? Heavily marketed by Microsoft, and put in the middle of a promotion window, it’s certainly been pushed into the minds of many XBLA players- so how is the final game?

 

 

The Mega Quest (great name, by the way!), has a little story associated with it, where you have to recover the ‘shiny stones’. There’s a bit of decent humour in here, so nice 2D cartoon style cut-scenes, and I quite liked the whole attitude. It’s nothing special, and the story is kept to a minimum in an already very short game, but it’s a good attempt with the no doubt limited budget that the devs have, and it certainly raised a chuckle along the way.

 

 

Raskulls is a platformer with a twist- you also need to break blocks. You can only break them when you’re really close, but it adds a real puzzle element to the game. Destroying a block will destroy any block attached to it that is the same colour. You often need to break through hundreds of blocks in order to complete a level, and they are often either against the clock, or against opponents. This means you have to be really strategic about where you blast the blocks in order to progress quickly.

 

 

There are loads of game modes, but some are hit and miss. The races and against-the-clock modes are fast, frantic and fun, but the more puzzling the modes are, the worse they become. There are no checkpoints, and some of these will require quite a lot of repeat plays before you succeed.

 

 

These also feel like they are unnecessarily hard in order to flesh out the game. The Mega Quest is probably only 2-3 hours long for a first playthough, and whilst there is some replay value to be found, it is a short game. Coupled with the fact that some levels are just way too hard, and that there aren’t many characters to play as; Raskulls is not the best value game out there. Multiplayer may keep you going, but don’t expect too much extra mileage from single player after 4-5 hours.