Thursday, August 17

Jump, Step, Step Review

Jump, Step, Step is a game with a good premise but ultimately one that doesn't hold up due to major flaws in the games mechanics. The game requires you to program a path for your character to solve each puzzle, adding new mechanics in very often. Sadly, these aren't explained well through broken english if at all. The story is simple but the dialogue often makes little sense. The graphics and sound is where the game holds up as the graphics are pretty fun to look at and the sound doesn't make your ears bleed.
Gameplay

The gameplay in Jump, Step, Step seems like a good idea at first but quickly develops into a poorly-explained guessing game with puzzles that are complicated but don't need to be. You need to type in commands that quickly become hard to follow and the ever-lurking "hint system" doesn't help. Even if you know the answer to a puzzle, it can take up to a minute just to type it in using the commands system and sometimes solutions work and sometimes they don't. The mechanics struggle to amount to anything and it creates a very unenjoyable game.

Another thing to note is that the game is incredibly short. According to Xbox I beat the game in just over an hour, and earned every achievement except the achievement for beating the game without dying. There is only one level and there isn't really rewarding to beat. The one boss can be beaten easily and the constant addition of new mechanics means you'll never really know what you're doing until you've already beaten the game.
Story

The game struggles to provide a good story due to the banter between the only two characters being boring, normal talk and never funny. To add to this the second character isn't explained at all. His icon is a controller, so maybe it is supposed to be the player? To add to this some if not most of the dialogue feels Google-translated and uses words people don't typically say. It isn't a story that you care about by any means.

Graphics and Sound

This is easily the best area in the game, although that isn't saying much. The graphics go between the light greens of an island to the dark greens of a forest and back again for most of the time, and the pink of the robot fits well with it. Everything is bright and vibrant and it isn't annoying like just about everything else. The sound mostly consists of sounds coming from Bob the robot moving or talking, and the soundtrack. The soundtrack is just 2 songs that are very short loops, but they don't get on your nerves too much especially considering the game is very short.

Achievements

Jump, Step, Step currently has 10 achievements for 1000 Gamerscore. All of them are either story-related or missable, so I would recommend using a guide for the solutions to the missable puzzles. There is also an achievement for beating the game without dying, which you will definitely need a guide for. You should have no trouble gaining every achievement in under 2 hours, and if you have a good guide and quick command-typing skills it is possible in under 30 minutes.

Jump, Step, Step is a game that tried something new but ultimately failed at it. Even if the current game was explained better it would be a much more fun game, and with a better story and more than one level it would very well be a good game. Sadly it is not right now, with too many flaws to count and few reasons to buy. The game is very close to being good, but the flaws make it a swing and a miss.

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