Mini Review – Comic Jumper

Scrolling beat em up/shooter

Killing in the name of (again).

Ian

Comic Jumper then. I dived right in and unlocked it midway through the first level when the game pulled the standard XBLA trick of  teasing you with a prospective achievement. 10Gs for killing X number of fembots. It may have been my ineptitude or just getting to grips with the control method but I died quite a few times on the first level alone. By quite a few times I mean I died a lot. To say this game is hard would be to say Chuck Liddell packs a mean punch. I could well see a good few people unlocking this and not progressing beyond the boss at the end of the first level.  To them I’d say man up and persevere as you’d be missing out on a fun (if derivative) scrolling beat-em-up / shooter that evokes the likes of Contra & Altered Beast in the shooting & punching aspects respectively.

Smiley has his John Woo moment.

The schtick is that your character, Captain Smiley, is the star of a flagging comic book that gets cancelled. To make ends meet he guest stars in three different comic series from fantasy (swords, brawn & cleavage), silver age (a Jack Kirby-esque superhero strip) & über-cute manga. His character takes on the art style of each respective comic with a few amusing flourishes.

Did I say it was hard? At times you’ll be frustrated by the gaps between checkpoints, but the key with this game is enemy placement is the same every time you play through so once you’ve memorised where they lie in wait, you should be ok.  The bosses are the typical learn a pattern and exploit it sort, although they do tend to mix things up attack patterns a little bit so expect to die repeatedly.

This being a Twisted Pixel game, the production values are high and there are numerous nods to their previous Live Arcade games. Also you can unlock Avatar gear, gamerpics & a premium theme. You also get a pair of ‘Splosion Man bonus levels included, so the 1200MSP pricetag doesn’t seem quite so bad after all.  The 1200MSP is roughly equivalent to The Maw plus all the extras if you bought them as I did.

In conclusion Comic Jumper is a fun game you’ll garner a few laughs from and enjoy for the most part, marred only by the difficulty spikes you’ll encounter from time to time. You could do much worse than making this one of your purchases in October to reach the magic 2400 and qualify for the rebate.

7/10