I, like many I'm assuming, found out about this thanks to James Rolfe's/AVGN's video on the game from several years ago. I already knew I'd play it one day for curiosity sake, and upon learning that it's only 40-50 minutes long, I figured now was a time as any considering how many other cinematic platformers I went through.
And to start, I actually don't think it controls that badly. Not on the same realms of smoothness and reliability as its contemporaries in this time period such as Another World or Flashback, granted, but the weight and arc of the jump are pretty easy to grow accustomed to, along with the general speed of Lester to be just right. I also appreciate a detail not a whole lot of games were attempting at the time, which is how Lester starts of as a scared piss-ass wimp, to becoming more confident once you hit the halfway point, never really hesitating to perform jumps or seeing enemies, culminating in fighting with pirates even! Of course, this begs the question of how this dude can swim all the way to the island's beach yet pisses himself at the mere sight of a crab, but eh.
Still, I did give it a 2/5 - or with my preferred scale, 4/10 - and that's cause while conceptually this game sounds pretty cool, everything else besides the controls aren't up to par, and it falls under one of media's cardinal sin: being utterly boring.
Like damn, this is one of the most plain ass 2D platformers I've ever played thus far. Nothing about it really sticks out in some manner, least of all the presentation. I get that the game takes place in a tropical island with beaches, forests populated with tribal people (that thankfully don't ride on harmful stereotypes too much), and caverns, but the drab color palette doesn't really invoke a strong sense of atmosphere, and the way the wildlife and humans are crafted is ugly. Lester and the pirates in particular look sunburnt as hell, eesh. Also, though I found his one example to be pretty weak, I do agree with Rolfe in that a number of objects needed to progress do tend to blend too well with the background, in the sense that they're so ordinary that I wouldn't think to use them until I refer to the longplay video I have on standby, a candle needed to burn something in the tribal village being one instance. There's also the music, which is so annoyingly high-pitched and overreliant on the same percussion and brass instrumentals with the same 2-3 song repeats, it makes post-2006 Dragon Quest scores Sugiyama composed sound like grand operas.
The levels themselves are like, fine? They're designed competently enough but again, they don't really stick out well due to underutilized setpieces and unique puzzles There's a section you do where you're chased by an animal, and have to run and jump across using vines in time to escape it. Despite the finnicky nature of maintaining the distance between you and the animal, the is one of very few moments I can recall the game actually pushing its mold out instead of sitting inside it. Most of the time the structure of a level actually tends to loop as well, and I don't mean that as a joke, I mean they tend to use most if not all of the same layout and enemy placements when going through them, a couple being super blatant about it. On the note of enemies, not that many enemies pose that much of a threat surprisingly enough, the only times they become that way is when they just drop them on you, like in one section with moving across water via wooden rafts, there are snakes you can just barely see at the very top of the screen. I'm also not really sure where this trial-and-error aspect the people who played this say, cause it's super sparse in this aspect too. There's only like... 4, probably, that can be classified as this, usually it's rudimentary sidescrolling gameplay, or being extremely tedious like having to go back-and-forth in a hostile-free environment just to make sure the right switch is activated to open a door, or having to deal with a stupidly fast spider as you throw a boomerang to a web-covered outing to escape the cave.
Honestly, I can see why Rolfe structured the video the way he did. Sure, he gave the game a harsher light that it didn't exactly deserve, but considering the mundane nature, it'd make for a more entertaining video. Not to mention he at least makes it clear - at least relatively speaking to bad YTers that play off obviously poor performance as ""jokes"" - that it's all just for entertainment purpose. As for Lester himself, he supposedly would've come back from the way the end credits is rolled out for a new game, which is funny cause I can't really think of anything else this nerdy boy can tackle.
btw this has one of the lamest title drops I've ever seen. It couldn't even get THAT right, smh.
And to start, I actually don't think it controls that badly. Not on the same realms of smoothness and reliability as its contemporaries in this time period such as Another World or Flashback, granted, but the weight and arc of the jump are pretty easy to grow accustomed to, along with the general speed of Lester to be just right. I also appreciate a detail not a whole lot of games were attempting at the time, which is how Lester starts of as a scared piss-ass wimp, to becoming more confident once you hit the halfway point, never really hesitating to perform jumps or seeing enemies, culminating in fighting with pirates even! Of course, this begs the question of how this dude can swim all the way to the island's beach yet pisses himself at the mere sight of a crab, but eh.
Still, I did give it a 2/5 - or with my preferred scale, 4/10 - and that's cause while conceptually this game sounds pretty cool, everything else besides the controls aren't up to par, and it falls under one of media's cardinal sin: being utterly boring.
Like damn, this is one of the most plain ass 2D platformers I've ever played thus far. Nothing about it really sticks out in some manner, least of all the presentation. I get that the game takes place in a tropical island with beaches, forests populated with tribal people (that thankfully don't ride on harmful stereotypes too much), and caverns, but the drab color palette doesn't really invoke a strong sense of atmosphere, and the way the wildlife and humans are crafted is ugly. Lester and the pirates in particular look sunburnt as hell, eesh. Also, though I found his one example to be pretty weak, I do agree with Rolfe in that a number of objects needed to progress do tend to blend too well with the background, in the sense that they're so ordinary that I wouldn't think to use them until I refer to the longplay video I have on standby, a candle needed to burn something in the tribal village being one instance. There's also the music, which is so annoyingly high-pitched and overreliant on the same percussion and brass instrumentals with the same 2-3 song repeats, it makes post-2006 Dragon Quest scores Sugiyama composed sound like grand operas.
The levels themselves are like, fine? They're designed competently enough but again, they don't really stick out well due to underutilized setpieces and unique puzzles There's a section you do where you're chased by an animal, and have to run and jump across using vines in time to escape it. Despite the finnicky nature of maintaining the distance between you and the animal, the is one of very few moments I can recall the game actually pushing its mold out instead of sitting inside it. Most of the time the structure of a level actually tends to loop as well, and I don't mean that as a joke, I mean they tend to use most if not all of the same layout and enemy placements when going through them, a couple being super blatant about it. On the note of enemies, not that many enemies pose that much of a threat surprisingly enough, the only times they become that way is when they just drop them on you, like in one section with moving across water via wooden rafts, there are snakes you can just barely see at the very top of the screen. I'm also not really sure where this trial-and-error aspect the people who played this say, cause it's super sparse in this aspect too. There's only like... 4, probably, that can be classified as this, usually it's rudimentary sidescrolling gameplay, or being extremely tedious like having to go back-and-forth in a hostile-free environment just to make sure the right switch is activated to open a door, or having to deal with a stupidly fast spider as you throw a boomerang to a web-covered outing to escape the cave.
Honestly, I can see why Rolfe structured the video the way he did. Sure, he gave the game a harsher light that it didn't exactly deserve, but considering the mundane nature, it'd make for a more entertaining video. Not to mention he at least makes it clear - at least relatively speaking to bad YTers that play off obviously poor performance as ""jokes"" - that it's all just for entertainment purpose. As for Lester himself, he supposedly would've come back from the way the end credits is rolled out for a new game, which is funny cause I can't really think of anything else this nerdy boy can tackle.
btw this has one of the lamest title drops I've ever seen. It couldn't even get THAT right, smh.