Somer Assault really is a story of what could have been. The game's core concepts, the idea of a silly slinky-cum-VVVVVV based puzzle platformer with basically this art style and basically this gameplay forms neatly in my head. It's so easy to imagine something just like this coming out in the summer of arcade on Xbox 360 and be the thing all the cool kids are playing for a week or so. The recipe for Somer to be at least a serviceable little game is all there, and for moments, it works.

When you're in a tight, interesting space with different enemies and only having the ability to shoot perpendicularly to the main body of your slinky, that's cool. Working out what position your body will be in when over there and running that stuff on the fly can be engaging.



Shame that those scenarios basically don't exist. I made it up. The level design in this game is universally awful. It's very 90s Euro (derogatory), which is to say interminably labyrinthine and large whilst having a background that scrolls too much versus the plane making it hard to keep your bearings. Theres huge sections of just straight up open plains with 3 of the same enemy harmlessly going overhead. Sections where you have to just have to jump or something without a threat. And the end result is so easy, at least in it's US version, to be remarkably boring. Dying is hard and getting a game over seems basically impossible if you're legitimately trying to beat the game. You get way too much health and the time controls are way too lenient.

The bosses fare little better but I can at least see how that would be more of a challenge to get right. Their attack patterns are just really simple and every fight seems to have straight up safespots.

They had something here, but the execution is just poor. Imagine if Kuru Kuru Kururin only consisted of hallways as wide as your stick, or VVVVVV let you take like 3 hits per screen. That's Somer Assault.