It’s a top-down racing game that’s one part F-Zero, one part Twisted Metal, and one part shoot-em-up. All good things that have the potential to come together in spectacular fashion, but nope.
The best part about the game is the aesthetic. It’s a sci-fi version of Homer’s Odyssey where an armless one-eyed Penelope goes on the search for her Odysseus in her F-Zero space car. The art is a mix of low-poly and 2.5D environments, with an above average soundtrack to boot.
As you race through the levels, you acquire new weapons like lasers, a grapple hook, mines, and even a busted teleporter. Races are alright. The courses are fairly challenging but the first place AI rubber bands WAY too hard.
But the biggest problems arise with the bosses and non-racing missions. Bosses range from insultingly easy to controller-smashingly impossible. The difficulty curve in this game is less of a curve and more of a 90 degree angle. One boss in particular was so frustrating, I had to back out of the level, equip the shield power up (out of the seven upgrades in the game, only about two are useful) and cheese the boss by throwing myself at it and spamming lasers until it died.
It ultimately comes down to the controls. This game has race-track tight turn-taking controls, but for some reason, those same controls are used in open arena tracks. They just do not work. My Switch says I spent about five hours on The Next Penelope. So that means one hour on the stupid spider boss fight, one hour on the final levels/bosses, one hour keeping the game on pause because I had to walk away for a bit, and the rest of the game is about two hours long.
For $13, The Next Penelope is way too expensive for how little content there is, along with said content being incredibly lackluster. I got it on sale for $10, but even that’s too high a price.
The best part about the game is the aesthetic. It’s a sci-fi version of Homer’s Odyssey where an armless one-eyed Penelope goes on the search for her Odysseus in her F-Zero space car. The art is a mix of low-poly and 2.5D environments, with an above average soundtrack to boot.
As you race through the levels, you acquire new weapons like lasers, a grapple hook, mines, and even a busted teleporter. Races are alright. The courses are fairly challenging but the first place AI rubber bands WAY too hard.
But the biggest problems arise with the bosses and non-racing missions. Bosses range from insultingly easy to controller-smashingly impossible. The difficulty curve in this game is less of a curve and more of a 90 degree angle. One boss in particular was so frustrating, I had to back out of the level, equip the shield power up (out of the seven upgrades in the game, only about two are useful) and cheese the boss by throwing myself at it and spamming lasers until it died.
It ultimately comes down to the controls. This game has race-track tight turn-taking controls, but for some reason, those same controls are used in open arena tracks. They just do not work. My Switch says I spent about five hours on The Next Penelope. So that means one hour on the stupid spider boss fight, one hour on the final levels/bosses, one hour keeping the game on pause because I had to walk away for a bit, and the rest of the game is about two hours long.
For $13, The Next Penelope is way too expensive for how little content there is, along with said content being incredibly lackluster. I got it on sale for $10, but even that’s too high a price.