Monday, February 20, 2012

Egg Man

Given the sheer number of video games out there, it's probably safe to say that damn near every household object has been the star of its own game, browser or not. Consequently, even though I've never SEEN another game whose egg is a hero, I'm sure it exists.

It's also probably better than Egg Man.


Concept

You're an egg. With a cape. And legs and a face and stuff.

Apparently, you have an aversion to veggies, and they to you.

Antics.

What can I say? Egg Man's story isn't really a story. You're an eggy superhero who has to traverse various levels. Get to the end of the lot and the game ends. I think, anyway. I couldn't get through all of Egg Man, for... various reasons.

To sum up? Egg Man is a platformer. It combines Super Mario Bros. with Mega Man X and... something that's not as good as either of those games.


Controls

The control scheme of Egg Man is what makes me so damn iffy about this game. It is not very good.

Okay. I will grant you that Egg Man is not difficult to control. You can do it with one hand, as all you need is the arrow keys. Not tough. The problem here is the game's response to your control inputs, that being not so great - particularly when it comes to jumps, and jumps are CRUCIAL to a platformer. How can you reach the next platform without jumping? In Egg Man, you cannot.

The problem with Egg Man is that he's hellishly slow, and the game grants him almost no reprieve when it comes to taking hits. You need to hit enemies spot on the top of the head, otherwise you're taking damage and flying back into a pit or whatever or something bad. What's more, the jumps require absolute precision, as even coming close to the top of a spot of water will instantly kill your poor little egg. FRUSTRATING.

Graphics

Egg Man's visuals start out pretty okay. Egg Man himself sports a decent design, the environment looks nice and clean, the enemies are decent... if uninspired... and you even get a nice sun to gawk over your progress. Fancy.

Problem is, the setting never changes. Ever. You'll face the occasional new obstacle or enemy, but they've just set in different configurations for each level. There's no change in tilesets. Preeeeeetty boring.

Sound

Egg Man's ambient sound effects are relatively negligible, aside from a few small things, so I'll focus on the music. It starts out okay as a little guitar riff, then moves... into that guitar riff. Again. And again. And... forever, the same snippet of a song, repeated and repeated... in bad quality... and the switchover between repetitions is not smooth... thumbs down.

Challenge Rating

Egg Man is a difficult game, and some of that stems from actual decent level design. Enemy placement is good, the traps scale appropriate to your progress, and some thought it required to get past tough areas. I'll give Egg Man that much.

Unfortunately, more of the challenge comes from the terrible controls and a lack of explanation. For example, you will NEVER know, except through accidental discovery, that Egg Man can wall jump. You do, however, learn through the broken-English tutorial (I imagine the game's a bit better understood in its native tongue) that you can set bombs by collecting eggs.

... the tutorial doesn't tell you that the bombs have extremely slow timers, though, and are damn near useless.

Overall, the biggest challenge in Egg Man is wanting to continue. It's not nearly a good enough game to warrant a full play-through. I got sick of it after trying to struggle through four levels, let alone getting through the full six shown in the walkthrough. (And it looks as though there are more than six levels on the game's map. Is this thing just incomplete?)

Conclusion?

Long story short, Egg Man has the elements of a successful video game, but it doesn't put them to use in any significant way. You're probably best off just skipping this game.

That said...

PLAY EGG MAN

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