“A PENNY FOR YOUR THOUGHTS: A GAME I SHOULD HAVE FALLEN IN LOVE WITH”
Although I was looking forward to Penny’s Big Breakaway when it was announced, a lot of the enthusiasm had since dissipated when Evening Star decided to drop the full game unexpectedly at the tail-end of February this year, a week before FFVII Rebirth. Being that I was rushing towards the end of my FFVII Remake replay at the time, I had virtually zero time to allocate towards any other games.
After FFVII Rebirth, of course I would go back and pick up Penny’s Big Breakaway. I mean, I’ve said this before, but Sonic Mania is my favorite game of all time. Christian Whitehead’s laser-focused understanding of Sonic’s strengths and weaknesses elevated Mania to legendary status for longtime fans and, in some ways, elevated the games themselves under a critical lens. Sonic Mania was the first big win for the franchise in a long time, and for me it’s almost impossible to separate the fanbase’s rejuvenation from Sonic Mania’s meteoric slam dunk reception.
So yeah, of course I’m coming into this one extremely biased, but I had faith. I knew that Whitehead was going to deliver the goods again. He’d been slow cooking another feast for six years, after all.
And well, I really don’t know where to start with this one. I’ve been trying to write more tonally neutral to avoid using hyperbole, especially if I’m only doing it to get a point across. I end up putting some stuff down that even I don’t really agree with. That being said, I’ll try to be blunt here.
This game was really boring to me. It’s not a long game at all, only clocking in around 4-5 hours, but I got really tired of it early on. It’s light on story beats, and I’ve never been a stickler for there needing to be story in my cartoon 3D platformers – especially Sonic, wherein the only story is “eggman bad, collect chaos emeralds,” but really, that’s all a Sonic game needs to be anyhow – but let’s admit it: if the gameplay is good, the story need only function.
The thing is, these levels are not nearly as interesting as the amount of them would lead you to believe. Between the 35 main story levels – not counting boss fights or special “star” stages – I seriously can’t recall a single gimmick that I really liked (well, maybe the elastic guardrails from the last world, but call that recency bias).
Between the eleven worlds Penny and the player will travel to, each world contains anywhere from 2 to 4 levels. I think these worlds are at least visually interesting and aesthetically pleasing (at first glance, anyways), but I also feel like almost every world overstays its welcome. There were times I’d finish a World X-3 stage and be dumped into an X-4 stage and just roll my eyes, like, buddy, what the heck is there left to do here? What ideas are there left to explore? And then when the 4th stage is done and over and it hardly leaves an impression, I think to myself, why’d they think a 4th stage was a good idea anyways? Even three stages feels like too many!
I hate to harp on about this, but none of these stages stick out in my memory. They all blend together, compounded by the fact that there’s so many of them that take place within the same “world” using similar stage gimmicks and the like that they all start feeling the same after too long. It’s bizarre, because the game is at least aesthetically pleasing, but not much else. If I saw a screenshot of Penny’s Big Breakaway, I would be able to identify it as Penny’s Big Breakaway, but if you asked me what “world” or “stage” the screenshot was taken in, I’d be drawing a blank.
I also remember Tee Lopes tweeting about Gamespot’s review of Penny’s Big Breakaway and tagging the guy who wrote it because he didn’t mention the audio, saying that he “maybe… played it on mute”. All I gotta say about that is that I love Tee Lopes and his music, but honestly if I’d been reviewing this game for a website and I wasn’t familiar with Lopes’ music, I probably wouldn’t have bothered mentioning it either, because it’s really just okay. It’s fine. None of it sticks out to me. I probably won’t be listening to it on repeat and/or years later like I did with the Sonic Mania soundtrack. Part of me wishes that each stage got its own individual song instead of one track per world, but that would also require composing and arranging 35 separate tracks which is very unrealistic.
Game should’ve had fewer levels, I think. Realistically some of these levels could be combined or cut entirely. I just really don’t see that Sonic Mania level of polish where each level feels like its own beast, and the music also (unintentionally) underlines that disappointment. Each world just feels like one long, meandering level. The levels are so long already, too, I always felt exhausted once I was finished with a world, and I don’t think games – let alone 3D platformers – should make me feel like that.
Because, look, if this were any other game by another company, I’d probably play it once and say, all right, maybe this isn’t a genre I’m familiar with, maybe I’m just not good at this type of game specifically. But dude, I’ve lived and breathed 3D platformers since before I was in Kindergarten. Something’s wrong here.
I’ve seen people critique the controls, the bugs, the polish (i.e. lack thereof), but I think it’s mainly that the game is just not fun enough. It took me two months to beat this because I kept putting it down and every time I put it down, all I could think was, “Man, I should really finish Penny’s Big Breakaway,” but also, “Man, I really don’t want to keep playing Penny’s Big Breakaway.”
I mean, I knew the game was short, and I still couldn’t muster up the time or the energy to commit to finishing. I don’t know. Felt bad.
In a lot of ways, I’m reminded it’s easy for people to “bounce off” Sonic games, so to speak. It’s easy to call every critique of Sonic a skill issue, but I think this also undermines the fact that some Sonic games feel straight up unfair sometimes. There’s Dark Souls-tier Fuck You moments hardwired into the series’ DNA. Some people don’t like that, and I get it. I’m not going to tell you that you’re bad at video games if you’re not vibing with Sonic, because as far as platformers go, I think Sonic is the only series that feels like approaching a genre that is wholly separate from other 2D platformers in the first place. A life of conventional 2D platformer wisdom does/will not prepare you for a Sonic game.
The reason I like going back to Sonic games though, beyond the simple fact that I grew up with them (once again, I’m biased), is that they’re short. The original Genesis games are only around an hour long each. Beyond the raw thrill of playing a nostalgic childhood platformer again, there’s the bonus of being good enough to finish a Sonic game with all the chaos emeralds – another challenge to demonstrate mastery. In the Adventure titles, stage objectives and the ranking system fulfilled that same “challenge to demonstrate mastery” criteria. It always felt good being able to clear stages and get a B or an A rank on the first run. It even makes me want to attempt to go for a full A rank file on Sonic Adventure 2 (maybe someday).
Another thing: there’s no ranking system (that I know of (I didn’t touch the time attack mode)) and only a par score at the end of each level that I never managed to reach. I would always try playing these levels somewhat fast, getting into the groove of the stage, while also completing side objectives and collecting showpieces as I went along. I never got anywhere close to getting 100% on any stage because I never got anywhere close to racking up that much score.
I assume this is Penny’s version of Pizza Tower’s P rank where, in order to get the highest possible ranking, players need to do everything within a level without dropping a combo. The difference is that Pizza Tower has a well-defined ranking system that usually rewards good play with appropriate ranks. I finished almost every level in Pizza Tower with an A rank and some B ranks here and there. It was enough positive reinforcement to make me want to attempt a full P rank playthrough – and although I’m pretty burnt out on Pizza Tower at the moment, I did manage to P rank every level and boss fight on Floors 1 and 2, which overall was a lot of fun.
Even so, I can’t help but imagine how less invested I would’ve been if Pizza Tower showed me an arbitrary score meter at the end of each of their levels, because then I’d feel like I was playing the whole game wrong. At least when I saw that I had a B or an A rank at the end of a level, I could say, “Okay, so I’m at least playing the game right, but there’s room for improvement”. When I’m playing Penny’s Big Breakaway and going for all of the side objectives and showpieces and I can hardly fill half of an arbitrary score limit, I just feel like garbage.
Even once I was familiar with Penny’s combo system and how jumping/rolling/jumping/rolling keeps a combo going, or bouncing on a trampoline, or doing the spin move, I just never bothered because it was all in service of a game that just wasn’t interesting or satisfying enough for me to want to master.
Couple all that with the fact that the controls never felt quite right to me. Sometimes I feel like I’d try using the Yo-Yo Ride move (idk what it’s called, it’s the Right Bumper on controller) on a slope and it would usually work, but sometimes Penny would just hit the ground and not pick up speed or anything. Later on, you have to use this move when riding literal waves, and it got even more confusing when sometimes it would work how I wanted it to, and other times it would just stop me dead in my tracks.
Obviously, going back to Sonic here, this is one of those things where it’s difficult to tell if the game is legitimately full of bugs/glitches, or it’s functioning as intended and there’s just some really specific nuance I’m not picking up on. This is why when I hear people talking about Sonic games being “broken,” I have to wonder if that’s a fair read, or people misinterpreting the respective game’s mechanics. In either case, let’s not kid ourselves here, Sonic games are notoriously filled with bugs/glitches, and are also notoriously hard to read and easy to misinterpret at times.
Even ignoring all that, you know, assume I suck at the game. If I went against my better judgment and decided to learn all the intricacies and nuances to the movement in Penny’s Big Breakaway, would it be a better game? Probably. But I’d have to be a completely different person for that to happen. I don’t really want to keep learning something that doesn’t interest me after playing it front to back.
There’s nothing enticing to me about revisiting Penny’s Big Breakaway. I can't recommend this one.
Although I was looking forward to Penny’s Big Breakaway when it was announced, a lot of the enthusiasm had since dissipated when Evening Star decided to drop the full game unexpectedly at the tail-end of February this year, a week before FFVII Rebirth. Being that I was rushing towards the end of my FFVII Remake replay at the time, I had virtually zero time to allocate towards any other games.
After FFVII Rebirth, of course I would go back and pick up Penny’s Big Breakaway. I mean, I’ve said this before, but Sonic Mania is my favorite game of all time. Christian Whitehead’s laser-focused understanding of Sonic’s strengths and weaknesses elevated Mania to legendary status for longtime fans and, in some ways, elevated the games themselves under a critical lens. Sonic Mania was the first big win for the franchise in a long time, and for me it’s almost impossible to separate the fanbase’s rejuvenation from Sonic Mania’s meteoric slam dunk reception.
So yeah, of course I’m coming into this one extremely biased, but I had faith. I knew that Whitehead was going to deliver the goods again. He’d been slow cooking another feast for six years, after all.
And well, I really don’t know where to start with this one. I’ve been trying to write more tonally neutral to avoid using hyperbole, especially if I’m only doing it to get a point across. I end up putting some stuff down that even I don’t really agree with. That being said, I’ll try to be blunt here.
This game was really boring to me. It’s not a long game at all, only clocking in around 4-5 hours, but I got really tired of it early on. It’s light on story beats, and I’ve never been a stickler for there needing to be story in my cartoon 3D platformers – especially Sonic, wherein the only story is “eggman bad, collect chaos emeralds,” but really, that’s all a Sonic game needs to be anyhow – but let’s admit it: if the gameplay is good, the story need only function.
The thing is, these levels are not nearly as interesting as the amount of them would lead you to believe. Between the 35 main story levels – not counting boss fights or special “star” stages – I seriously can’t recall a single gimmick that I really liked (well, maybe the elastic guardrails from the last world, but call that recency bias).
Between the eleven worlds Penny and the player will travel to, each world contains anywhere from 2 to 4 levels. I think these worlds are at least visually interesting and aesthetically pleasing (at first glance, anyways), but I also feel like almost every world overstays its welcome. There were times I’d finish a World X-3 stage and be dumped into an X-4 stage and just roll my eyes, like, buddy, what the heck is there left to do here? What ideas are there left to explore? And then when the 4th stage is done and over and it hardly leaves an impression, I think to myself, why’d they think a 4th stage was a good idea anyways? Even three stages feels like too many!
I hate to harp on about this, but none of these stages stick out in my memory. They all blend together, compounded by the fact that there’s so many of them that take place within the same “world” using similar stage gimmicks and the like that they all start feeling the same after too long. It’s bizarre, because the game is at least aesthetically pleasing, but not much else. If I saw a screenshot of Penny’s Big Breakaway, I would be able to identify it as Penny’s Big Breakaway, but if you asked me what “world” or “stage” the screenshot was taken in, I’d be drawing a blank.
I also remember Tee Lopes tweeting about Gamespot’s review of Penny’s Big Breakaway and tagging the guy who wrote it because he didn’t mention the audio, saying that he “maybe… played it on mute”. All I gotta say about that is that I love Tee Lopes and his music, but honestly if I’d been reviewing this game for a website and I wasn’t familiar with Lopes’ music, I probably wouldn’t have bothered mentioning it either, because it’s really just okay. It’s fine. None of it sticks out to me. I probably won’t be listening to it on repeat and/or years later like I did with the Sonic Mania soundtrack. Part of me wishes that each stage got its own individual song instead of one track per world, but that would also require composing and arranging 35 separate tracks which is very unrealistic.
Game should’ve had fewer levels, I think. Realistically some of these levels could be combined or cut entirely. I just really don’t see that Sonic Mania level of polish where each level feels like its own beast, and the music also (unintentionally) underlines that disappointment. Each world just feels like one long, meandering level. The levels are so long already, too, I always felt exhausted once I was finished with a world, and I don’t think games – let alone 3D platformers – should make me feel like that.
Because, look, if this were any other game by another company, I’d probably play it once and say, all right, maybe this isn’t a genre I’m familiar with, maybe I’m just not good at this type of game specifically. But dude, I’ve lived and breathed 3D platformers since before I was in Kindergarten. Something’s wrong here.
I’ve seen people critique the controls, the bugs, the polish (i.e. lack thereof), but I think it’s mainly that the game is just not fun enough. It took me two months to beat this because I kept putting it down and every time I put it down, all I could think was, “Man, I should really finish Penny’s Big Breakaway,” but also, “Man, I really don’t want to keep playing Penny’s Big Breakaway.”
I mean, I knew the game was short, and I still couldn’t muster up the time or the energy to commit to finishing. I don’t know. Felt bad.
In a lot of ways, I’m reminded it’s easy for people to “bounce off” Sonic games, so to speak. It’s easy to call every critique of Sonic a skill issue, but I think this also undermines the fact that some Sonic games feel straight up unfair sometimes. There’s Dark Souls-tier Fuck You moments hardwired into the series’ DNA. Some people don’t like that, and I get it. I’m not going to tell you that you’re bad at video games if you’re not vibing with Sonic, because as far as platformers go, I think Sonic is the only series that feels like approaching a genre that is wholly separate from other 2D platformers in the first place. A life of conventional 2D platformer wisdom does/will not prepare you for a Sonic game.
The reason I like going back to Sonic games though, beyond the simple fact that I grew up with them (once again, I’m biased), is that they’re short. The original Genesis games are only around an hour long each. Beyond the raw thrill of playing a nostalgic childhood platformer again, there’s the bonus of being good enough to finish a Sonic game with all the chaos emeralds – another challenge to demonstrate mastery. In the Adventure titles, stage objectives and the ranking system fulfilled that same “challenge to demonstrate mastery” criteria. It always felt good being able to clear stages and get a B or an A rank on the first run. It even makes me want to attempt to go for a full A rank file on Sonic Adventure 2 (maybe someday).
Another thing: there’s no ranking system (that I know of (I didn’t touch the time attack mode)) and only a par score at the end of each level that I never managed to reach. I would always try playing these levels somewhat fast, getting into the groove of the stage, while also completing side objectives and collecting showpieces as I went along. I never got anywhere close to getting 100% on any stage because I never got anywhere close to racking up that much score.
I assume this is Penny’s version of Pizza Tower’s P rank where, in order to get the highest possible ranking, players need to do everything within a level without dropping a combo. The difference is that Pizza Tower has a well-defined ranking system that usually rewards good play with appropriate ranks. I finished almost every level in Pizza Tower with an A rank and some B ranks here and there. It was enough positive reinforcement to make me want to attempt a full P rank playthrough – and although I’m pretty burnt out on Pizza Tower at the moment, I did manage to P rank every level and boss fight on Floors 1 and 2, which overall was a lot of fun.
Even so, I can’t help but imagine how less invested I would’ve been if Pizza Tower showed me an arbitrary score meter at the end of each of their levels, because then I’d feel like I was playing the whole game wrong. At least when I saw that I had a B or an A rank at the end of a level, I could say, “Okay, so I’m at least playing the game right, but there’s room for improvement”. When I’m playing Penny’s Big Breakaway and going for all of the side objectives and showpieces and I can hardly fill half of an arbitrary score limit, I just feel like garbage.
Even once I was familiar with Penny’s combo system and how jumping/rolling/jumping/rolling keeps a combo going, or bouncing on a trampoline, or doing the spin move, I just never bothered because it was all in service of a game that just wasn’t interesting or satisfying enough for me to want to master.
Couple all that with the fact that the controls never felt quite right to me. Sometimes I feel like I’d try using the Yo-Yo Ride move (idk what it’s called, it’s the Right Bumper on controller) on a slope and it would usually work, but sometimes Penny would just hit the ground and not pick up speed or anything. Later on, you have to use this move when riding literal waves, and it got even more confusing when sometimes it would work how I wanted it to, and other times it would just stop me dead in my tracks.
Obviously, going back to Sonic here, this is one of those things where it’s difficult to tell if the game is legitimately full of bugs/glitches, or it’s functioning as intended and there’s just some really specific nuance I’m not picking up on. This is why when I hear people talking about Sonic games being “broken,” I have to wonder if that’s a fair read, or people misinterpreting the respective game’s mechanics. In either case, let’s not kid ourselves here, Sonic games are notoriously filled with bugs/glitches, and are also notoriously hard to read and easy to misinterpret at times.
Even ignoring all that, you know, assume I suck at the game. If I went against my better judgment and decided to learn all the intricacies and nuances to the movement in Penny’s Big Breakaway, would it be a better game? Probably. But I’d have to be a completely different person for that to happen. I don’t really want to keep learning something that doesn’t interest me after playing it front to back.
There’s nothing enticing to me about revisiting Penny’s Big Breakaway. I can't recommend this one.