Lovely Planet Review

LOVELY PLANET Review Screenshot 1

Lovely Planet is a first person shooter, developed by Quick Tequila and published by tinyBuild Games. The game has been released previously on the Wii U and Steam, and is now on the Xbox One. The game instantly made me curious from the stripped down art style and simplistic gameplay.

FPS games are probably one of the most popular and widely played genres of games played nowadays. With the likes of Call of Duty, Battlefront and Halo, you would think that another new FPS would be a silly thing to do, but what this game offers is something truly different and unique. Most modern shooters are fast paced, violent and have realistic looking graphics. Lovely Planet is a game that firstly looks very different, but also the gameplay aims to do something very different.

It’s certainly not what you would expect from a shooter, but the core gameplay is to make your way through stages and shoot down enemies. It’s important to note that you don’t reload and there’s no ammo. The main objective in Lovely Planet is to get through each stage, as fast as possible, and making sure you get rid of all the bad guys. The game has about 100 levels, that are all relatively short in length, but they sure get tricky as you progress. Each stage is possible to finish very quickly, under a minute, but the game gets incredibly hard. I died many times on the same levels, and its all about trial and error to make sure the get the perfect run. The stages have different types of obstacles to beat, whether its timing a perfect jump, dodge or taking out the bad guys.

LOVELY PLANET Review Screenshot 2

The enemies in the game start off pretty easy, but they quickly become very challenging at times. The bad guys can shoot bullets at you, there’s giant red blobs that you have to shoot as they fall, and blobs that move along the ground. It’s vital that you take these out in order to complete the stage. In the early stages the game introduces each different obstacle one at a time. The game then slowly dials up the difficulty by adding more, and throwing multiple obstacles at you at once. The game is extremely challenging, but ultimately very satisfying once you beat it.

I found it tricky to get a grips of the controls at first, although they are actually very simple. It’s just different to other shooters we are used to. You fire your weapon with the right trigger and the left trigger to jump. You also have the ability to lock on to targets by holding down the left bumper. This is incredibly important, and at times needed to be used to finish a stage. If you want to restart the stage, you can hit the x button. As I said, it will certainly take some getting used to if your used to shooting mechanics in other games. I really enjoyed the gameplay and was pleased to try a different type of shooter.

LOVELY PLANET Review Screenshot 3

The overall presentation of Lovely Planet is aesthetically pleasing, with a slick and simplistic style. The game uses a pastel colour scheme, that I really enjoyed, and is entirely different to games like Call of Duty. The game will appeal to all ages, and the style actually reminded me of Minecraft a bit. This might be due to the ‘block like’ look of structures and objects. I thought that the music was ok, but nothing special. One of my only real complaints is that, there’s no cross-hair to aim. I’m so used to have it in other games, and it made things even more challenging here by not having it. Also there’s no narrative here, but I don’t think it needs it, as it’s all about the slick gameplay.

Overall Lovely Planet is a shooter that I wasn’t expecting. It’s completely different to other games, in both style and gameplay. The game can get incredibly challenging, but that only makes the experience even more rewarding. The game has a unique art style, that works really well. I would certainly recommend this game if you want something you can play for long sessions, or short bursts, and offers a challenge.

REVIEW CODE: A complimentary Microsoft Xbox One code was provided to Brash Games for this review. Please send all review code enquiries to editor@brashgames.co.uk.

Subscribe to our mailing list

Get the latest game reviews, news, features, and more straight to your inbox