![]() You get so many of these items thrown at you that we found ourselves wondering if the game had been balanced in such a way that the levels were near-unbeatable without them, and their microtransaction intent became jarringly clear. You can also gather items within the levels that will give you an easier time – the ability to freeze gravity for example, or use dynamite to blow up inconvenient walls. Each level ranks you one, two or three stars based on your score, with certain numbers of stars needed to unlock later worlds. Speaking of which, there’s quite a lot of that about. Stiff, banal and strangely confusing, they’re quite frankly hideous remnants of the game’s shameful freemium past. Unfortunately, the menus are a different story. So it’s exactly as good-looking as it needs to be it’s a simple arcade puzzle game that lives or dies on its lack of visual clutter. With something as ultimately demanding as Boulder Dash, the most important thing is the ability to instantly parse what’s available to you in any given situation. ![]() That said, it’s hardly a game that has ever pushed its spectacular looks as a selling point. It doesn’t look bad, but it doesn’t have any real flair. Graphically, Boulder Dash 30th Anniversary can best be described as “functional”. It’s a little weird, but you’ll quickly get the hang of it. Not only are the boulders slaves to gravity, they’re also slaves to momentum, and they’ll roll down “steps” if you’ve left such a path in the dirt, which may require you to – you guessed it – dash out of the way. If you dig out the dirt under – yes! – a boulder, it will fall straight down and crush anything in its path, despite the fact you can still manoeuvre in all directions. The unusual bit is that while Rockford moves as though he's in a top-down game (think Chip's Challenge), gravity is strictly in 2D side-scrolling mode. ![]() You have to move around caves collecting items (mostly colourful gems) while avoiding enemies and hazards. If you somehow haven’t encountered it before, Boulder Dash is quite difficult to get your head around at first. We’ve seen the hero, Rockford (surely one of the most frequently-redesigned characters ever), rock up on Nintendo systems in the past – besides his bows on DS and 3DS (2007’s Boulder Dash: Rocks! and 2011’s Boulder Dash XL), the original Boulder Dash saw a NES port back in 1990 (wait, that must be what this is the 30 th anniversary of! Let’s all agree with that and move on). Still, all things considered, this is assuredly Boulder Dash, and you’ve most likely played it or one of its derivatives (such as the excellent Repton) before. Which was Boulder Dash’s actual 30th anniversary. And yes, it turns out, this was a mobile game. Or it would if we weren’t getting hefty “late mobile game port” vibes from this game’s extremely familiar phone-optimised user interface. Indeed, a quick glance online reveals that Boulder Dash was first released in 1984, which would make this Switch version Boulder Dash 36th Anniversary, if anything. In fact, come to think of it, that can’t possibly be right, because we remember this one back on the Apple II. It’s amazing to us that 2020 is only Boulder Dash’s 30 th anniversary. Captured on Nintendo Switch (Handheld/Undocked)
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |