Super Lucky’s Tale Review

Super Lucky’s Tale is a third person family friendly platformer where you take control of a happy go lucky kleptomaniac fox. Like the platformers of the early 2000’s and 90’s on an N64 you are to find different types of collectables to progress through the game enabling you to unlock doors to further levels to retrieve other collectables resulting in a final level to complete the game. On the journey towards these collectables you are tasked with varying levels which challenge your use of the control scheme and sometimes the control scheme itself. For the most part jumping out the way of obstacles, leaping across jumpable platforms and attacking your enemies are the ways in which you battle the challenges you face. One defining element is that you can also burrow into the ground underneath your enemies or mounds of dirt to reveal collectables or battle foes from below. This technique has a few uses but they are usually quite obvious as you come across them.

The game starts you off almost in the middle of a story with a family member who has tasked you with a challenging journey after becoming unstuck in their own adventure. This forced story is almost there just because it has to be to try and make sense as to why you are collecting everything to get further in the game. The game could have quite easily just been about a fox who wishes to see behind the last door in the game, or one that just loves to collect. All the game really wants you to do is venture far and wide to complete the levels so you can find collectables to progress further into the game. Enemies and levels are fairly varied, but there isn’t a lot of challenge to complete them. Especially for those who have played any platformer before.

This Xbox One X compatible title relives a simplistic dream from the N64 era but with crisp graphics and a smooth framerate for almost all the game. It was first revealed along with other games in the Xbox One X line up and with its style of art, its not hard to see how it can push its defining 4K 60fps features to the max. As far as the eye can see, theres not a lot for the console to deal with, but it does look very smooth and clean because of this. Most likely something Nintendo will achieve in a few years time when their consoles eventually can hit 4K too.

Super Lucky’s Tale has one mode like a lot games in this genre, the story mode. There is no multiplayer, this is simply a single player experience for you to enjoy, and for the most part is it enjoyable but fails to bring anything new or challenging to make an experience you want to play for long periods of time. As a family game Super Lucky’s tale does cater to those that may be new to gaming but want to play with a 2017 machine with 2017 features. But for those that remember games that are much older which may not look as good but are far more innovative at the time, this game feels somewhat forced or under engineered. Don’t get my wrong, this game looks really nice and for the most part is enjoyable, but in a lot of other ways could have gone much further to surprise us using the hardware we have in 2017. Especially when there are other platformers this year like Cup Head which although may not be family friendly, and are a lot harder to complete, defiantly do bring more to the table in the way of innovation and defining moments in history.

The control scheme of this game is quite straight forward and is very much a repeat of those from the past too. Jump, move, burrow and attack to name a few in a 3rd person format. Like most games, 99% of the time the controls do what you would expect, but on that odd 1% the camera angle can either disturb where you move and you may fall off a ledge, or you may not be able to see what you need to at the right time. This is very rare though and isn’t a bugbear. Much with the rest of the game, it is very well put together, so much so that there isn’t anything new that could go wrong having been tried and tested many times before by others.

Loading times take longer than expected for a game like this, especially for its fairly low Xbox One X file size. The first loading screen for instance feels longer than expected, and is just loading what is essentially a press start screen before it needs to load again.

To summarise, Super Lucky’s Tale is a fairly low key game that shows off some of the features of the Xbox One X with classic enjoyable gameplay. Its graphics are smooth and sharp, but wont blow you away with fidelity and detail. Audio too is great but again nothing new. This game reminds me of a meal I like, but have eaten many times before and so has lost its excitement. Theres nothing wrong with it, but again nothing surprising or groundbreaking too.

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

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