Widgets Odyssey II review

Widgets Odyssey II marks the first of the PlayStation Minis I have played, and I was actually fairly impressed with what two dollars worth of gaming can supply you with. Widgets Odyssey II is a 2D platforming adventure, where players take control of five different wacky robotic characters throughout four rather intensive missions. The game feels like a wacky combination of Looney Tunes’ “Duck Dogers” episodes, Earthworm Jim, and a dash of Oddworld: Abe’s Odyssey. The result is a zany little experience that generally leaves a warm sense of satisfaction.

What you get

For the same amount of change that would only get you a couple goes at a crane game at a pizza parlor, you get a surprisingly decent amount of gameplay. It seems to me that the Minis category on the PlayStation Network is meant for quick little titles for the world’s increasingly ADD-riddled crowd, making them practically the Robot Chicken of video games. But just because they’re short, doesn’t mean they aren’t fun or worth noticing.

Mini-games are fun and look good, such as this dance-off

Widgets Odyssey II packs in four mission levels, each having their own mini-game. The levels are unlocked in sequential order, and accessible from the map screen. Each previously-beaten mission and mini-game are individually selectable from the map screen. While there are no missed items to go back and collect, there are high scores you can go back to challenge, or simply enjoy a mini-game or two.

There are also several rather well-done movie cut-scenes that mark the transitions between missions, each having an animated prologue and epilogue. While cut-scenes in games sometimes feel forced in as filler, the ones in Widgets were absolutely delightful. They added to the mood of the game by really filling in the sense of wacky adventures, as well as giving us a good sense of the five main characters. For example, the heroes fly in a spaceship that literally swims through space and launches the characters into missions via a giant slingshot; in another scene, the characters use a randomly-found toilet to prop up a door to prevent baddies from spilling in. I actually found myself wanting to finish the missions in order to be treated with the next movie, an experience I haven’t felt in quite a long time.

Gameplay

The gameplay in Widgets is fairly good overall, with some rough spots that could have used a little more time and polish to really shine. In each of the 4 missions, you control a different robot in the hero team, with the 4th mission being a robot team that works together. Each character’s controls are generally the same, but are different enough that their levels are tailored well to their strengths. They all can move left and right, jump, attack, and have a context-sensitive interact command to flip switches and ride vehicles. Sometimes the character animations felt a little rough or there was a bit of disconnect between what I wanted the character to do and what they did—such as running and then pressing the attack button causing a bit more of a delay for the wind-up to a punch than I would have liked—causing me to miss enemies on occasion and get a laser to the face. Otherwise the character movements and animations were fine.

Some characters are better suited to stealth than combat

The general goal of the different missions is to move throughout the level, defeating or sneaking past various patrolling enemies, collecting key items like batteries to energize vehicles or keycards to open gates, and to reach the end of the level to play the end-mission mini-game. Fortunately, the item-collection aspect is fairly straight-forward. Each mission will only have about 3 to 4 key items that are required, so there isn’t that annoying sense of item hide-and-seek Easter Egg hunt too many games employ.

The levels themselves are fairly well designed, but again suffer from some flaws. They employ multiple screens, where you can move between them by walking through the edge on any of the four sides of your screen. Because of the detailed artwork that makes up the background, sometimes its not very clear that you can jump through the ceiling to an area above you, or that the end of the screen has a small tunnel you go through. However, at least there is a blue arrow icon that appears when you are close to an edge that lets you go through it, so finding even obscure transitions are just a matter of exploring the screen edges for a blue arrow.

Along the way, some of the missions employ a few puzzles to mix up the action. None of them were overly elaborate, but enough to make me pause to scratch my head for a moment. For example, I came across three switches in a row. Flipping them caused lights above them to come on in various colors, with a different combination appearing with different switch position combination. It wasn’t immediately apparent what the colors meant until I started to roam other sections of the level to see what had changed, and why the changes were important.

Levels are full of baddies vying for your precious life bar

Part of the challenge as well as frustration in the game was the fact that the characters have a life bar. The life bar is actually the robot character’s energy meter. Everything in the game expends energy, including taking damage from traps and enemy fire, as well as merely moving around. With fairly large level design, the need to collect items, puzzles that take some moving around to see the effects of, and a wide assortment of baddies, it’s a little too easy to have the bar depleted.

The problem I have with this is that it’s also too difficult to replenish your energy supply. Scattered through each level are little energy cubes, and defeating enemies also yield these pickups. However, they only heal a tiny fraction of your energy. In fact, sometimes you will expend MORE energy just to walk over and pick one up than it gives you. Also, as pretty as the levels are, sometimes there was some blood-boilingly irritating level design issues.

In one area, when you first walk into the screen, about one second after entering an enemy is spawned on the other side that proceeds to fire a solid beam of electricity at you. You can’t jump over it, and being hit stuns you. I was struck three times while trying to rush over to punch him, knocking down about half my life. The remaining search to heal myself killed me, causing me to re-start the entire level.

Also, there are no mid-level checkpoints. This goes for the mini-games as well. Should you die at the end of a level (usually by running out of energy just by having run that far), or even during a mini-game challenge, you have to repeat the entire level over again from the beginning. This goes for the final mission as well, which consists of a labyrinth full of time-consuming puzzles, a chase scene, and the final boss. Your energy levels (or lack thereof) carry over, so take too many hits and you’re left at the final boss with only a notch or two left. One hit, and you start all over back at the labyrinth. While it isn’t a huge deal as you get better with each play-through, it felt like it artificially padded the length of the game with retries that caused more frustration than a sense of challenge. Checkpoints or even having energy recharge stations (even if they only bumped you up to 50 or 75%) would have done a lot to make the game more enjoyable. Also, an easy way to retry a mission would have been appreciated, rather than having to exit out and back into a level, complete with loading times for each step of the way.

Overall, the gameplay and design was decent with fun characters and levels, but really could have used some more time to tweak and polish. With a health bar that constantly ticks down and is difficult to replenish, there were more cheap deaths and having to manually quit and restart because you know you don’t have enough energy to finish the level anymore after taking too much damage, there was frustration that could have been easily averted.

Art & Graphics

The game's humor is hilariously over-the-top and zany

Aesthetically, the game looks good. The backgrounds look almost hand-painted, and fit the wacky mood of the game perfectly. While they are almost completely static with few animations, it suited me just fine. Sure, I would have liked it if the giant gears actually turned and there to be bullets flying and smoke billowing in the distance during scenes of anarchy, but I’ll take simple and clean over something that may end up distracting and cheesy.

The characters and enemies look good, and for the most part are animated smoothly. Everyone is very expressive and cartoony, such as grimacing in pain when being shocked. The special effects such as laser beams look good and appropriate, fitting the setting well.

As already mentioned, the movies are spectacular. While they aren’t artistic masterpieces and look very much like they were created in Adobe Flash (which isn’t a bad thing), characters are cheerful and expressive, move and bounce around as you would expect in a cartoon, and are exceptionally fun to watch.

Audio

The music and sound effects in the game are fairly good. While nothing sticks with you as memorable, the music fits any given scene appropriately enough. The audio effects are a set of classic sci-fi cartoony zaps and bangs. The explosions you hear when you destroy an enemy robot are particularly satisfying.

Some of the sound effects are a little grating on the ears. Some of the laser effects, such as the one that fires in the opening title screen, seem extra-loud compared to everything else and hard on the ears. Also, the menu screen tune is fine, but the same tune is used for the title screen, the main menu, the stage select map screen, and the mission briefing. I would have liked more variety, with at the very least a different tune for the mission selection; as things are, the music gets monotonous, fast.

Alien jibberish is used, saving us of potentially bad voices

One last note I must make is on the voice acting. The only actual voice in the game, to my surprise, is the narrator. The robot heroes themselves and the various other characters have a fun sort of garbled gibberish with subtitles, giving it an alien feeling and thus saving us all from any perils of potentially bad voice acting—an excellent choice, indeed. The narrator himself does an excellent job of giving us the urgent sense in the story development without sounding forced or cheesy.

Characters

The characters are rich: unique, expressive, and fun

The characters in Widgets are extremely fun and appropriate for the mood of the game. There are five main characters—Spad, Monk, Cosmo, Helmut, and Bruce. Each have their own set of strengths and flaws, as well as a personality that really comes out in the video cutscenes.

Each character has a very distinctive playing style that enriches the experience when playing the missions. While some are more suited for combat than others, you have to decide what the best strategy is for maneuvering about the levels, based on the character you’re using. As mentioned before, each mission features its own character, so there is no character selection ability, which is fine since the levels are tailored to the character anyways.

The characters remind me of the ones from the Homestar Runner series of online cartoons. While the characters feel somewhat stereotypical, they are rich and fun enough to feel creative and original. As such, I feel the characters are a great fit, and I have no complaints at all about the character designs.

Story

The story in Widgets is light, wacky, and fun. The heroes have survived what was called the “Cosmic Sneeze”, which has ravaged a planet very dear to them. They embark on a quest to defeat the game’s main antagonist, Yagor, a delightfully over-the-top, stereotypical villain.

Yagor’s new scheme is to create a doomsday device that harnesses similar destructive power of the Cosmic Sneeze. The heroes are on a race against time to find out exactly what Yagor is up to, and find a way to stop him at all costs, while rescuing any hostages Yagor may have taken.

The story is similar to something I would expect in a Looney Tunes episode. It’s no work of literary genius, but it ends up being extremely fun to follow. There’s a few dramatic surprises, and a plot twist or two, so it’s rich enough to feel like a legitimate story. Coupled with the fun characters and the entertaining movies, I found the story to be quite enjoyable.

Summary

Overall, Widgets Odyssey II was fun, and fully worth the price of admission. The entire mood of the game was nutty and played out like a good Warner Bros. cartoon. Upon beating it, I had a good sense of accomplishment, and walked away feeling I was entertained. However, it certainly could have been better, as there were just too many frustrating moments and cheap deaths to fully excuse the game from achieving excellence. While I would recommend the game and you get your money’s worth, I sincerely hope the game developers learn from their mistakes and make a sequel that addresses these issues.

Pros

• Overall fun
• Outstanding cutscene movies
• Great sense of humor; zany
• Level full of variety, based on character played
• Several fun mini-games
• Short but sweet; get your money’s worth

Cons

• Can be very frustrating; cheap deaths
• Health depletes quickly, items don’t restore enough
• No mid-level checkpoints or effective retry option
• Some level design and enemy placement blunders