One of the other games was the subject of this review: a 2.5D platformer called Sideway New York. The game was developed by Playbrains and released on PSN for the Playstation 3, and later brought to Steam. The game follows a hip young grafitti artist with the Nox. While parkouring around the city one day, looking for his missing friend, Nox gets himself dragged through a portal into the land of Sideway, a two-dimensional world made of paint that exists on flat surfaces. With the help of the mysterious Fume, he must rescue his friend, defeat the tyrannical Spray, and find a way back to the third dimension.
For starters, the game looks great. The entire concept of the game is based on perspective. The player sees a three-dimensional polygonal world of buildings, streets, pipes, power lines, etc. The gameplay, on the other hand, is confined to the two-dimensional world that exists on these surfaces. This creates a really cool effect, as the camera pans around buildings while Nox moves. The characters will bend around corners, roofs will completely flip around depending on which wall you enter from. Windows and transformers act as the platforms that Nox must navigate. Seeing your character running at an angle while the cmaera shifts from one building to another, or watching him duck behind 3D foreground objects, never gets old.
The characters and other elements of the 2D game world are equally pleasing. They do a great job of reflecting the grafitti motif. The general design is gritty, with typical grafitti-style bubble letters floating about everywhere, just like something you would see on an actual wall. Some death traps and platforms are faded and washed out, just like they have been sitting there for a while. Others are bright and colorful. Characters and enemies all look like something out of a cartoon or a newspaper comic. It contrasts with the more realistic, albeit stylized, rendering of the 3D streets around Sideway. It all helps to further reinforce the games perspective gimmick, keeping it fresh and making the game just as much fun to look at as it is to play.
The animation as Nox's fists splatter paint or enemies twirl around are equally well done. It all lends itself to a great looking game. The only complaints I could muster would be the uninspired look of some of the basic enemies. There is also a lot of gray and brown in this game, although it is to be expected, since the action takes place on a background of brick and concrete. The designers mostly manage to keep it from reaching FPS levels, however, by playing with lighting, adding a lot of background elements, and keeping objects within Sideway bright. All things considered, the art direction and perspective manipulation of Sideway NY make it an awesome looking game.
Unfortunately, as cool as the perspectives look, that's about the extent of their use: looks. You might think that the game has some unique puzzles built around manipulating and interacting with the different dimensions. This is not the case. As cool as the design looks, it rarely has any influence on the gameplay. Occasionally you need to cut around walls or corners in order to orient a ceiling and change gravity, or pull a a box on the ceiling over a ledge so it falls to the foreground of a wall. These instances are few and far between (you could probably count them on one hand) and they aren't even anything special when they do show up.
In fact, as far as gameplay goes, Sideway New York is pretty standard platforming fare. You'll walk around, jump on platforms, dodge hazards, and beat up an enemy once in a while. There isn't much to elaborate on in this regard. If you've played any 2D platformers, you know exactly what to expect. Sideway doesn't bring anything new ot the table. Nox does gain some powers as the game progresses, but even these fail to add much depth. Most of them only work in designated places, such as the ability to create platforms, which only works to light up pre-existing blocks. You do get double-jumping and gliding skills to change things up a little.
This, alone, does not make the game bad. Although Sideway is a generic platformer at its core, it still has a lot going for it. Specifically, the level design is great. The first few may be a little plain. As the game progresses, the layout of the levels gets more and more interesting. In the second half, you will be gliding around thorns, dodging water, and fighting off waves of enemies. Bosses will test your ability to use your special skills. Sections of levels are put together ingeniously, taking advantage of precision jumps and testing everything you have learned. The truth is, the design and layout of later levels is among the best 2D platforming I've seen in recent memories. All in all, the level design alone could have made the game awesome.
I say "could have" because, to be frank, the game does have some pretty glaring flaws, and this is pretty much the meat of this review. Specifically, the controls are off. It's important to note here that the game was designed for a controller, being originally released on Playstation Network. The Steam version also encourages a plug-in game pad. Playing through Sideway, I get the impression that it would go a lot smoother using a controller. I can't confirm this, so I'm going by my experience using a keyboard.
The thing is, moving Nox around is kind of off in a way that is hard to explain. He moves similarly to how other platform heroes move around in ice worlds. Not in the slipping and sliding sense, but in terms of "taking off." It is often hard to steer because he seems to take his time doing what you tell him to do. I'm not talking about controller lag, but sluggish momentum.
The problem gets worse when Nox is jumping or gliding. Your character is shockingly difficult to maneuver through the air. Trying to alter your jump, something that is a given in any platform game and certainly a common element here, often results in failure. It feels like there are gravity machines just off screen, hooked to analog switches, and everytime you jump, somebody turns them up and down at random.
This is annoying early on. In later levels, when the challenge starts to pick up, certain parts can be almost unplayable thanks to the controls. The saddest tragedy is that the levels are designed brilliantly. The controls are what holds them back. Levels are so well put together that you want to have fun experiencing them. The floaty movement just turns that into a chore.
It doesn't help that everything else in the game moves faster and smoother than you do. Dodging a low level enemy's basic spit attack is impossible without using a shield. Jumping from one moving platform to another can take several minutes: they are moving so fast that it's difficult to predict where to aim for, and correcting yourself once you've jumped is like trying to steer a tractor trailer. With racing slicks. On ice.
Another complaint I have is with the powers you unlock as the game goes one. Their effects seem to be inconsistent. One power allows you to activate a shield which circles around you for a short time. Sometimes it reflects enemy projectiles, sometimes it just vanishes when struck by one, and other times it seems to just not protect you at all.
The height on your double jump fluctuates tremendously, going from boosting you a whole story to barely adding an inch to your regular jump. If you need to redo a section, you might find that your double jump doesn't even clear a platform that it catapulted you over last time. This might have something to do with inertia, but as I've already said, controlling your momentum is hard enough, so good luck figuring that out.
The worst one by far is a late-game power that allows you turn into a puff of paint by jumping into these floating blue orbs. This ability is used to get around walls and pass over instant-death traps. The problem is that once you hit the blue orbs and turn into the paint cloud, Nox immediately spirals out of control. Your control over Nox in this state is almost nil. Pushing a directional button is more like a subtle suggestion, as he might move kind of that way, but mostly zips off wherever the game feels like taking him.
This leads to some of the most frustrating points in the game. This power is often used to get around instant death traps. More often than not, turning into the paint cloud just sends you careening into the very obstacle it was meant to help you avoid. Since the paint cloud only lasts for a very short time (we're talking literally less than one second) you don't even have the chance to correct and save yourself.
One area late in the game requires you to glide around insta-kill vines (similar to the picture above) before making you paint-cloud through a would-be dead end. Simply hitting the orb can be hard enough thanks to the aforementioned controls, but once you do, you just end up rushing straight into the vines anyway. I must have spent a half hour on that one screen alone.
Even the bosses each seem to have something wrong with them to throw the fight off. They are standard fair for platforming games: go through a pattern until the boss enters a vulnerable stage, then smack them. Repeat a couple times and you win. You've seen it all before. Each one has some kind of quirk to break the battle a little.
For example, the second boss (the pink rabbit guy seen above) requires you to reflect projectile to make him dizzy, then do a body slam move onto his head for damage. It sounds simple enough, except the hit detection on the boss's sprite is wrong. In order for your slam to register, you have to hit him dead center in the middle of the skull. If you are off by even a tiny pit, you pass right through and do no damage. Since the boss's vulnerable phase only lasts for a couple seconds, you don't get the chance to try again, and have to sit through his attack pattern all over.
Two of the other four bosses have similar problems. Additionally, even when vulnerable, only certain special attacks seem to work on them, with no indication as to why or which ones. You might find yourself wailing away with body slams, only to figure out that you need to use a shoulder rush. The only boss that doesn't have any issues is the last one. As a result, the final boss is actually one of the easier sections of the game.
I don't mean to keep ranting, but there is one more issue that I had with the game. This is also the most subjective. It's purely opinion, so your mileage will vary on this one.
That would be the soundtrack. I hope you like hip-hop. As somebody who generally would rather listen to nails on a chalkboard, this soundtrack makes me envy the deaf. There are about a half dozen tracks in the game, made by some guy who I guess is a professional, named "Mr. Lif." Most of them are wordless hip-hop "beats," like the music you hear in the background of a rap song. They are all dull and grinding. A couple have some actual rapping, which makes them slightly less irritating, although that isn't saying much.
Each level takes two of the songs and repeats them ad infinitum. If the music wasn't bad enough as it was, imagine the same two songs repeating over and over and over again. It just adds insult to injury when you're struggling through something due in-game and the same song starts up for the fifth time. It's enough to piss you off.
This review got very negative, very quickly. I didn't mean to pile on the hate, nor give the wrong impression. The game truly does have a lot going for it. With tighter controls and clearing up some of the more minor issues, it could have been great. Sideway New York has a lot of potential. In no way, shape, or form will I try to deny that.
Sideway New York is an interesting play on perspective that looks great, even if the gimmick's effect on gameplay is negligible. In fact, the level design, especially later in the game, is some of the best I've seen in a long time. What holds it back isn't its lack of innovation, but its floaty controls. Gamers with a PS3 might be in a better boat. Unfortunately, the Steam version has too many issues, and I can't recommend the PC version unless you are an extremely devoted platformer fan or you can get it on the cheap.
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