Platypus
A clay shooter? Well, it's certainly novel...
Published: January 4, 2007
There's not much to a shoot-em-up. Get a peppy little fighter, equip it with a handful of powerful weapons and send it out against a ridiculous number of enemies firing off an impossible number of shots, give the player a handful of continues so they can actually it make it a little way through the game and bam, shooter. Now, that won't make a good shooter, and with the genre dying, fans are likely to take anything so long as it feeds their fix without having to resort to more extreme measures like arcade cabinets and hunting down ROM collections.
The thing about it is, those usually are good shooters, the ones that stay great even years after they were released, which I can only hope is the motivation behind creating an entry into a genre that's on its last legs. Playpus, sadly, doesn't really belong to that group. It's doubtful that anyone will be playing this game -- whether on the PSP or in its original indie form on PC -- years from now. Oh, it's cute, due mostly to the fact that the entire game looks as if it was sculpted from clay, but it lacks that special quality that would keep someone hunting for it in a decade like so many classic arcade ROMs.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not bashing the initial charm of the game, it's just that the main draw, the aforementioned Plasticine aesthetic (created single-handedly by Squashy Software, the company name of developer Anthony Flack) isn't quite enough to distract from the fact that the game is a purely by-the-numbers shooter without some of the more elaborate goodies like big boss fights or even a ton of variety in the levels.
There are 30 of them in total (six stages split into five levels with a boss fight at the end), and it's impossible to separate the visuals from the gameplay since they are more or less one and the same; every explosion, every cloud, every floating city far off in the distance, every shot is painstakingly modeled from the same block of clay and digitally colored. This quasi-claymation approach helps at least lift the game's basic shooter trappings (kill off a wave of enemies, pick up a power-up, get a spread shot or laser or wave or rapid-fire shot) to the point of novelty.
There is a story -- such as it is -- of a continent-wide city that has grown so large that there simply isn't any physical room. When noxious fumes and a decided lack of parking space make things... inconvenient for these Collostropolan residents, they take a peek at their nearby touchy-feely crunchy granola hippie types in nearby Mungola, realize there's plenty of room for expansion there, and laugh at the teeny-tiny defense force of the single-squadron Platypus fighter and start moving in.
It's cute, just like the rest of the game, though most of the humor (and, well, almost all of the detail) is lost in the transition from a PC monitor to the PSP's comparatively smaller screen. Fortunately, the game is a fantastic entry point for newcomers to the genre; it's fairly easy (yet still challenging enough to give a taste of what the more hardcore entries can present), and it offers all the basic concepts like mid-bosses and power-ups and patterned waves of enemies, but sadly just doesn't really move beyond them. With developers like Treasure still pumping out shooters like Ikaruga, there's really no reason to write off innovation in the genre.
I know I keep going back to the visuals, but they really are the focus here, made all the more impressive by the fact that they're all hand-modeled and done by a single person. Sadly, though, the game really doesn't get a chance to properly shine on the smaller screen. Worse still, there are times when the limited color palette and more simplistic backgrounds can hide shots, leading to unnecessary deaths. Given that the game requires a rather hefty investment of time to get to the boss and move on to the next proper checkpoint, it's a shame that the game can be needlessly punishing. At least you're allowed to continue from the last stage with the same four lives and two continues that you get at the beginning of the game.
The audio, though, perfectly captures the spirit of old-school shooters of years past. This is no doubt due to the fact that the game happily borrows remixed tracks from games like Parallax and Driller, apparently tweaked by the original composers themselves. It's a fantastic little touch, and something that really deserves some praise. Explosions are a little flat, and the shots never have enough oomph, even through headphones, but at least the game sounds like a classic shooter.
Platypus is a decent shooter, and as mentioned earlier, it's not like there are a lot of those out there. Fans of the genre will have fun for a couple of hours, but it's a little hard to swallow the $20 entry price. Even Survival and Ad-Hoc co-op modes don't really do much to add any length to the game. At a bargain bin price, it's hard to completely fault the game's length, but this is really something that probably should have been released as a downloadable PS3/PSP game on the new PlayStation Network Platform. As a brick-and-mortar offering, though, it's just a little too steep.
The thing about it is, those usually are good shooters, the ones that stay great even years after they were released, which I can only hope is the motivation behind creating an entry into a genre that's on its last legs. Playpus, sadly, doesn't really belong to that group. It's doubtful that anyone will be playing this game -- whether on the PSP or in its original indie form on PC -- years from now. Oh, it's cute, due mostly to the fact that the entire game looks as if it was sculpted from clay, but it lacks that special quality that would keep someone hunting for it in a decade like so many classic arcade ROMs.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not bashing the initial charm of the game, it's just that the main draw, the aforementioned Plasticine aesthetic (created single-handedly by Squashy Software, the company name of developer Anthony Flack) isn't quite enough to distract from the fact that the game is a purely by-the-numbers shooter without some of the more elaborate goodies like big boss fights or even a ton of variety in the levels.
There are 30 of them in total (six stages split into five levels with a boss fight at the end), and it's impossible to separate the visuals from the gameplay since they are more or less one and the same; every explosion, every cloud, every floating city far off in the distance, every shot is painstakingly modeled from the same block of clay and digitally colored. This quasi-claymation approach helps at least lift the game's basic shooter trappings (kill off a wave of enemies, pick up a power-up, get a spread shot or laser or wave or rapid-fire shot) to the point of novelty.
There is a story -- such as it is -- of a continent-wide city that has grown so large that there simply isn't any physical room. When noxious fumes and a decided lack of parking space make things... inconvenient for these Collostropolan residents, they take a peek at their nearby touchy-feely crunchy granola hippie types in nearby Mungola, realize there's plenty of room for expansion there, and laugh at the teeny-tiny defense force of the single-squadron Platypus fighter and start moving in.
It's cute, just like the rest of the game, though most of the humor (and, well, almost all of the detail) is lost in the transition from a PC monitor to the PSP's comparatively smaller screen. Fortunately, the game is a fantastic entry point for newcomers to the genre; it's fairly easy (yet still challenging enough to give a taste of what the more hardcore entries can present), and it offers all the basic concepts like mid-bosses and power-ups and patterned waves of enemies, but sadly just doesn't really move beyond them. With developers like Treasure still pumping out shooters like Ikaruga, there's really no reason to write off innovation in the genre.
I know I keep going back to the visuals, but they really are the focus here, made all the more impressive by the fact that they're all hand-modeled and done by a single person. Sadly, though, the game really doesn't get a chance to properly shine on the smaller screen. Worse still, there are times when the limited color palette and more simplistic backgrounds can hide shots, leading to unnecessary deaths. Given that the game requires a rather hefty investment of time to get to the boss and move on to the next proper checkpoint, it's a shame that the game can be needlessly punishing. At least you're allowed to continue from the last stage with the same four lives and two continues that you get at the beginning of the game.
The audio, though, perfectly captures the spirit of old-school shooters of years past. This is no doubt due to the fact that the game happily borrows remixed tracks from games like Parallax and Driller, apparently tweaked by the original composers themselves. It's a fantastic little touch, and something that really deserves some praise. Explosions are a little flat, and the shots never have enough oomph, even through headphones, but at least the game sounds like a classic shooter.
Platypus is a decent shooter, and as mentioned earlier, it's not like there are a lot of those out there. Fans of the genre will have fun for a couple of hours, but it's a little hard to swallow the $20 entry price. Even Survival and Ad-Hoc co-op modes don't really do much to add any length to the game. At a bargain bin price, it's hard to completely fault the game's length, but this is really something that probably should have been released as a downloadable PS3/PSP game on the new PlayStation Network Platform. As a brick-and-mortar offering, though, it's just a little too steep.
