Runner3 is a pale shadow of its predecessors, but it ends up being an OK game. It feels like someone crucial left their job at this companyRunner3 is a pale shadow of its predecessors, but it ends up being an OK game. It feels like someone crucial left their job at this company and was replaced with somebody who only sort of understood it. That, or whoever was in charge got bored, hotboxed a conference room and decided that the dumbest things were wrong with the prior games.
Runner3 takes another step away from Bit Trip Runner's brilliance, as Runner 2 did, but seems to trip and fall down the stairs. Runner3 adds things. There are more actions to take. You can double jump. You can use sideways springboards. You can drive cars and rockets like in the Donkey Kong Country remakes. There are more perspectives. You can run left. You can run toward or away from the screen. For some reason, the screen is tilted about 15 degrees away from you when you're facing right.
The trouble is that no one asked for any of this. Double jump? Now it's incredibly difficult to tell how high a jump needs to be. I jumped. I thought I would make it. No, try again. Wait, do I need to double jump? Yes, I need to double jump. How can I tell? I have to fail first. On every double jump.
The screen being a little tilted? Well it makes it harder to see where your character is in relation to the obstacles. Why? Who knows. It just throws off your timing. Hotbox idea. Running toward the screen? Now you can't see the obstacles until you've already hit them. This is definitely the worst addition.
The vehicles? Well now instead of discrete, single button presses timed to the beat of the music, you use the whole range of motion, and you're basically just playing Gradius or R-Type.
A lot of this would be fine. Really. The series has always been difficult. But it wasn't artificially difficult, like you fighting with the camera. And the part where I said it feels like some crucial member quit? It's the game's overall design. There's no easing you into the gameplay. You don't deal with levels one skill at a time. The first levels aren't introductory. Somebody who hasn't played an earlier game is going to get frustrated quickly and want to give up.
There are 'impossible' levels unlocked by beating a couple levels at a time. These are the worst culprits of the bad learning curve. The game hasn't trained you to do anything, you've finished two levels, so here is one with insane difficulty that'll take you at least an hour to beat. Good luck.
The game has a host of stuff it refuses to explain. Gem course open! Ok. What is that? I can buy capes at an in-game shop using Gems and Coins. No clue how to get a coin. No idea what a cape does, but I'm guessing it does nothing. This, like, the rest of the game, shows a creator disinterested in communicating with the player. Doesn't communicate through level design, or even bother with words. The messages during loading screens are supposed to help, if you can figure out what a 'Gildan' is.
The creators of the game seem to be focused on the graphics, being kooky, and not at all on how the game plays. This was the primary appeal of Bit Trip Runner. The graphics were unremarkable. There was great music that you could play along with on a controller. The challenge was like recording a take in a studio. If you got to 1:30 and you screwed up, you had to start over. If you got all the way to the end without messing up, you felt amazing.
Now, I could probably play this game with the sound off. I don't feel much of anything.
Runner3 is like a band going on tour after replacing all its founding members. Yeah, that's the name you recognize. You know this hit song. But someone else is singing, and it just doesn't work.…Full Review »