![]() When you factor in a charitable donation to Valley Children’s Hospital in California, the balance is in its favour. But it is also generous, with plenty of collectibles and game genres packed into its five or six hours. It’s an ambitious game that pulls in so many different games and genres, and not knowing what you’re going to be doing from one room to the next became a pleasure more often than it was a pain.Ĭastle on the Coast is about the messiest, most uneven little 3D platformer that you could hope to encounter. But that inconsistency was part of it’s charm by the end. If you are a game designer, please, please only make a Monkey Ball section if you’re confident your engine can support it. Looking back on our time with Castle on the Coast, a lot of it was rocky: we had sequences where we were headbutting the camera and controls repeatedly. They’re just impressively well made, and show that the designers can pull off fantastic pirouettes when they aim to be minimalist, rather than maximalist. The difficulty is perfectly pitched on the edge of incredible challenge, and checkpoints mean that you’re never overly punished. It’s like an epic Fall Guys obstacle course, and you’re convinced it must end soon, but it just keeps on going. This is the Periculo, and their sections are fantastic. Coming at the end of each of the four worlds, you’re teleported to a floating islandscape, lit up with psychedelia. Other jagged joys are the Periculo sequences. The last world takes only fifteen minutes. World One takes you an hour or two to complete. If there’s a criticism, it’s that these moments are skewed to the start of the game, and the final levels feel more rushed. Those collectibles unlock doors, so you’re always rewarded for finding them, and they allow the world to blossom out. It feels satisfying to spot something twinkling in the distance and then work out a path to get there. ![]() You get some reasonably large environments that are absolutely dense with petals and stars to collect. Part of that’s in the freedom of movement, matched with the collectathon. It’s not quite Spyro, but it’s closer than you’d think. You have to be forgiving and scrape off some of the mud to get to it, but underneath is the spirit of multiple PS2 platformers. ![]() It sounds like we had a hard time of it with Castle on the Coast, but through all the mess, the chaotic controls and the surfeit of ideas, there’s some rough-edged joys here. But the rules on when you can or can’t climb are a little hazy. George has the uncanny ability to walk on near-vertical walls, which means you can cheese your way through some sections by simply climbing over them. The majority of issues are at the intersection of camera and controls, but some odd rulesets don’t help either. But returning to a platform that you overshot is a nightmare because the camera won’t play. You get a jetpack, which is a godsend, as it’s a safety net for when you’ve missed a platform. You can do the old Mario jump-jump-flip, but that last flip will often ambush you by flinging you way off course and flinging your camera in all directions. You’re given a lot of maneuverability, but the game can’t keep up with them. It’s not because they’re limited: it’s quite the opposite. Basically, Castle on the Coast is a mismatched graphical mess. Yet, the characters are drafted in from a completely different game, being simple plastic toys – especially George. When you wander into the opening castle, effectively the hub area of the game, it feels like someone cut out lots of pictures from Borderlands and scattered them on the floor. Everything is gaudy and noisy, highlighted with thick cel-shading, to the degree that it’s hard to pick anything out. There’s something bravely ugly about Castle on the Coast’s world. ![]() It’s not the most involving of character motivations to put it kindly. George is mostly getting involved because he likes collecting things. The wizards feel aggrieved for a past wrong, so they nick four keystones from a castle and scatter them across four different worlds. He arrives by boat and wanders into an argument between a community and their two wizards, Vendrick and Aleandra. But he’s also got nothing to do with the plot of the game. While everyone else in the world can talk, he can only nod and shake his head with a tongue lolling out of his mouth. You play George the Giraffe, the mascot of Valley Children’s Hospital, and he’s a curious old bean. ![]()
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