Wii Hidden Gems #7 - Sam & Max: Season One

This time I'm taking a look at the Wii version of Sam & Max Season One.  The titular duo are freelance police, with Sam being a dog and Max being a "hyperkinetic rabbity thing" as the game often describes him.  They were created by Steve Purcell and originated as a comic book form in 1986, where they developed a cult following.  After Purcell became employed at LucasArts and worked on the graphics for titles such as Monkey Island 1 and 2, he was given the chance to make his own Sam & Max graphic adventure, which was subtitled Hit the Road and was released in 1993.  The game became hugely popular and ranks up there with the true classics of the genre, securing Sam & Max a much bigger audience.  In 1997 there was a fairly short lived TV series starring the duo, but then things went silent for quite some time.

Fast forward to around 2002, and there was word that a new Sam & Max game was in development, a true sequel to Hit the Road.  Unfortunately LucasArts decided to pull the plug on the project in March of 2004, which was the impetus for Dan Connors, Kevin Bruner and Troy Molander to leave and start their own company, Telltale Games.  After moderate success with early titles like Telltale Texas Hold 'Em, Bone, and some licensed CSI games, they manage to secure the rights for new Sam & Max games directly from Steve Purcell.  The six episode first season was originally made available from October 2006 to April 2007 on the PC, with the Wii version appearing on the Wii Shop in 2008.  A physical version containing all six episodes and some fairly inconsequential bonus materials was published by The Adventure Company in 2008.  The game was hugely successful for Telltale, and led to two further seasons for Sam & Max, as well as future series like Tales of Monkey Island, Back to the Future: The Game and The Walking Dead.  Nowadays Telltale Games are a really big deal in the industry, securing the rights to huge properties like Game of Thrones, Minecraft and Batman.  I intend review each of their series eventually, but I am starting here with Sam & Max: Season One, aka Save the World. 

Plot and Character: 8 out of 10
As each episode of Sam & Max: Season One introduces new characters and develops old ones, I am going to break them down into their own mini segments with my thoughts on each. Overall though the characters are very strong and entertainingly written.  One or two of them are on the verge of being extremely irritating but that is deliberate.  While there is an overarching plot that connects each episode to the one after it, the thread is pretty thin in this season to be honest, and Telltale definitely get much better at this by the time we get to Season Three.

The season premiere sees our crime fighting duo investigating an outbreak of hypnotism.  This episode introduces us to The Soda Poppers, former child stars who used to appear on an old sitcom called "Soda Jerks".  Each of them have their own characteristics and catchphrase - we have Whizzer, whose overactive bladder can cause him to rush off to the bathroom every few minutes ("Time out for number one!"), Peepers, whose over sized eyeballs give him fantastic vision ("I can see you!", and Specs, a super obsessive control freak who absolutely hates it when others ruin his plans ("You made me mess up!").  We also meet recurring characters Jimmy Two Teeth, who is a shady rat who lives in a hole in Sam and Max's office.  In this first episode, the duo have to negotiate getting their phone back from Jimmy by supplying him with Swiss cheese.  Then we have Bosco, the owner of the local "inconvenience" store and paranoid conspiracy theorist.  He is constantly trying to convince you that the government is out to get him (which to be fair, sometimes they are.  There's also Sybil Pandemik, who is working as a Psychotherapist when we meet her here, and finally Brady Culture, the villain of the piece, who is trying to spread his "Eye-Bo Ocular Exercises" program throughout the neighbourhood with the help of the hypnotised Soda Poppers.  It is up to Sam & Max to return Whizzer, Specs and Peepers back to normal and then stop the nefarious plans of Culture Once and for all.   7 out of 10

The second episode sees Sam & Max tasked with freeing the audience of a chat show, who have been taken hostage by the host, Myra Stump.  Myra herself appears to be based on Oprah Winfrey, at least partly, because of her penchant for giving away gifts to the entire audience.  As the villain of this episode, I think she is the weakest of all of them, having only a brief appearance right at the end.  The bulk of this episode is spent helping the studio director produce various TV shows, from a sitcom called "Midtown Cowboys", a cooking show, a parody of Who Wants to Be A Millionaire and Embarrassing Idol.  You will encounter the Soda Poppers again while attempting to win Embarrassing Idol, and you will also meet new characters like Philo Pennyworth, a highly trained chicken thespian who stars as the landlord in Midtown Cowboys, where every episode sees the main characters attempting to hide the fact that they are keeping a cow in their living room.  You'll also meet Hugh Bliss for the first time, the father of Prismatology (a parody of Scientology), standing in as a game show host.  Bosco and Sybil are also back, with Bosco putting on a hilarious British accent, and Sybil changing professions to tabloid journalist for the "Alien Love Triangle Times". 7 out of 10

This time Sam & Max are investigating Ted E. Bear's Mafia Free Playland and Casino and trying to track down a mole who is working for the cops in secret, by using the phrase "Does the carpet match the drapes".  This is definitely the funniest episode so far, as it was hugely entertaining going around trying out the code phrase on everyone you meet, and the musical number that the creepy animatronic bear heads on the wall sing was great as well.  New characters this time around include Leonard Steakcharmer, a shady gambler to attempt to cheat Sam out of his tokens while playing Indian Poker, Chuckles, the second in command at the casino, and Ted E. Bear himself.  This time Sybil is a professional witness, preparing to testify against the Toy Mafia, who put a hit out on her.  Bosco is once again attempting to disguise himself by wearing a beret and affecting a bad French accent.  This was the briefest episode so far for me but also the best written.  8 out of 10

 

This was another great episode with another entertaining musical number part way through. This time, apparently the president of the United States has become a victim of hypnotism, but after further investigation, it is discovered he was a robot all along that was actually the one doing the hypnotising.  After the heroic duo have dealt with him, the chief of staff activates the Lincoln memorial, who it turns out is a huge stone robot.  An emergency election is called where Max stands as presidential candidate in opposition of robo-Lincoln, and it's your job to ensure he gets elected.  New characters this time around include Agent Superball, a member of the secret service who is always trying to deny you access from where you need to go, and the animatronic Abe Lincoln himself.  The Soda Poppers return, with Whizzer trying to start a campaign for the victims of Soda Abuse, and Specs and Peepers on the opposing sides of a civil war between North and South Dakota.  This time Sybil is running a dating agency, and Bosco has turned Russian.  8 out of 10

For me this was the best episode out of all of the first season.  It sees Sam & ; Max taking a trip into Reality 2.0 after acquiring some high tech goggles, and then attempting to prevent The Internet from enslaving the entire human race.  In this episode you will meet the C.O.P.S (Computer Obsolescence Prevention Society) who are a bunch of ageing machines attempting to preserve their usefulness.  They include an telephone, an classic 80's arcade machine that strongly resembles Sinistar (especially when he says "I hunger!"), an old timey computer, an Atari VCS and a printer / scanner.  Hugh Bliss reappears in virtual form as the Internet Wizard, who gives Sam & Max an important item for their quest.  Sybil is now a beta tester (at least until you come along and break her goggles, which incidentally how you obtain them in the first place), and Bosco has decided to be a half elf - for the shire!  This is definitely Telltale at its best.  9 out of 10

 

The final episode of the first season sees you visiting the moon as the title would suggest, in an attempt to stop the big bad's plan once and for all.  In case you haven't played the game yet and would like to, I am not going to reveal too much information about this one or I would spoil for you.  Overall I didn't enjoy this one quite as much as the previous three episodes, but I would say it's on par with episodes one and two.  Pretty much all of the characters you've met over the course of the previous episodes come back in one way or another, and it all leads to a fairly satisfying climax. 7 out of 10
 

You will revisit certain locations, such as the office, multiple times throughout the season.

Graphics: 7 out of 10
The visuals of Sam & Max on the Wii are OK but definitely not the best I've ever seen by quite some margin.  There's also some really bad performance issues which I believe could have been sorted out if a bit more time was spent optimising the code.  With the Wii proving itself more than capable of running impressive software like the Super Mario Galaxy games or Xenoblade Chronicles, it should be able to run something as simple as a graphic adventure game without any difficulty, yet there are times where I encountered chronic slowdown with an absolutely abysmal frame rate.  Most episodes feature a rather ill advised and poorly implemented chase sequence in the Desoto, which is where the poor performance is most noticeable, although there were also a few moments in regular game play where the action slowed to a crawl and looked as if the game was about to crash at any moment.  It actually did lock up completely on me once.  The ugly looking background textures were a side effect of the episodes starting life as downloadable content on the Wii Shop, where they had to come in under a certain size.  If you play game on PC, it will look and perform a lot better.

Sound and Music: 8 out of 10
The voice work is really strong with a relatively small group of actors playing a whole bunch of different characters.  Bosco was definitely the highlight for me, with his British and Half Elven voices being extremely funny.  Hugh Bliss and the Soda Poppers could get irritating, though this is intentional.  Jared Emerson-Johnson has composed some great music for this series as well, from the main theme, the various background tunes and the musical numbers like the ones from The Mole, the Mob and the Meatball and Abe Lincoln Must Die!

Game Mechanics: 8 out of 10
Setting the technical performance of the game aside, graphic adventures like this actually work really well on the Wii thanks to the simple point and click interface.  You navigate around the different areas of the world, converse with the different characters to try and glean what you're supposed to be doing, pick up any objects you find and use them to progress through the story.  The episodic nature of the game means that there are never too many options available to you at once and though some puzzles will require a certain degree of thought with a bit of effort it should be possible for even genre newcomers to make progress.  These episodes are definitely on the easier end of the graphic adventure scale, but that's not necessarily a bad thing.  They are meant to entertaining and completable within a few hours, not super challenging. 

 

On the set of Midtown Cowboys during Episode Two - Situation: Comedy.

Innovation and Cleverness: 6 out of 10
Telltale Games were the pioneers of the episodic adventure game, which have since become hugely popular and have seen other companies bring their own take on the genre into the market (such as Life is Strange and Blues & Bullets).  The Wii controller is also a perfect fit for this type of game, and Telltale were fairly big supporters of the system in the early days.  It's a shame that the third season of Sam & Max never came out for the Wii, but that's another review for a later time.

Value & Replayability: 6 out of 10
Copies of Sam & Max: Season One can be fairly easily obtained for about a fiver, and the game should take you about 12 hours to complete if you spend 2 hours on average on each episode.  I would say that's pretty decent value for money.  Whether you will ever replay the game again after the first time is questionable though.  I could potentially see myself playing through the episodes again in a few years time, although the plot is not in the same league as classics like The Secret of Monkey Island or Day of the Tentacle.

Overall: 7 out of 10
Sam & Max: Season One is definitely worth playing.  If you have access to a PC though, I would definitely play it on there rather than the Wii as it will look nicer and not suffer the same embarrassing technical issues that are present on the Wii.  Having said that, for me personally it's still a nice game to have in my physical Wii collection as it is part of the diverse range of games that are available for the system.  Many people cannot look past the shovelware and see the quality titles underneath - whilst Sam & Max is not as polished as it could have been it is most definitely not shovelware and is still very entertaining despite its problems.  Hopefully Season Two will have ironed out the flaws - we will find out when I get around to playing it in a month or two!

Game Diary: Feeling the Pressure

Why hello there! Fancy seeing you here. Been a while hasn't it?

This week I want to go over some of the short and long term plans that I have for both the blog and the YouTube channel.  I do sometimes have a tendency to bite off more than I can chew when it comes to this sort of thing so it might turn out that some of this will take a long time to pan out, and some of it may never happen at all.  I hope that isn't the case though!

At the beginning of the year I made a long list of older games that I want to try and beat over the rest of 2016.  This list is so long that I almost certainly won't get around to everything, but I want to do my best and finish a nice healthy chunk of it.  In my "RMGB in 2016" post I already touched upon how I would like to get around to completing all the Zelda titles that I haven't got around to yet.  You can also add to that list some Resident Evil games.  I have struggled to complete any of the games that have come out after Resident Evil 4.  Part of that is definitely because there has been an overall dip in quality, but I have also drifted away from the survival horror genre in general for whatever reason.

The other thing I want to focus on over the coming year is adventure games.  My Monkey Island Mondays series is the starting point for this, and episode will hopefully be online in early March.  I would also like to play other well received games in the genre that I have skipped though:  Deponia, the Runaway series, the Dreamfall / Longest Journey games and stuff like the Black Mirror trilogy from the Adventure Company.  These point and click games all work really well with the Steam Controller and Link, so I will be playing through them gradually.

To begin with though, I thought I would focus on finishing some of the older Telltale Games series that have been in my collection for years, yet I have never got around to beating.  For starters, we have Sam & Max Season One on the Wii.  Because each episode only takes a few hours to complete, they are quite easy to fit into my schedule, and the jokes hold up pretty well today even if technically the Wii version has its fair share of problems. I just finished the final episode yesterday, so there will be both a written and a video review up sometime over the next week.

After that I will probably play something else on the Wii that won't take too long to finish, as a bit of a palate cleanser.  I was thinking that the Bit Trip Collection might be a good option.  Then I will move on to playing Back to the Future: The Game, followed by another palate cleanser, and then Sam and Max: Season Two.  I have been meaning to bring you some more Wii Hidden Gems for quite a while now, so playing these will both take care of my hankering for adventure games and allow me to address the lack of Wii content.

There are also two other things that I want to take care of as soon as possible - a review of Kameo: Elements of Power as part of the Rare Replay series, and episode three of the C64 review show.  So at the next opportunity I will be sitting down with my Xbox One for some extended play sessions in an attempt to get to the end of Kameo.  The C64 video is actually partly done - I have finished the section on Turrican. I have the three other sections left to complete: Bod Squad, Retrograde and Last Ninja Remix.  Finally, I have drawn up a list of twelve more games that I would like to cover for PS2 Tuesdays Season 4.  With everything else I'm already working on, I don't think that this will begin until the second half of the year, but I would like to start preparing for it now.  Covertape Chaos Season 2 will also start in the back half of the year.

So as you can see, I have given myself quite a bit of work to do, and to be honest it's all starting to feel a bit overwhelming.  As long as I take it slow and steady though, I should get there.  My original plan of releasing a new episode of Monkey Island Mondays was way to ambitious. Even a monthly schedule is quite tight, seeing how I like to play a variety of things at the same time, and still need to leave some room for brand new releases.  My new target is to get all five episodes out by the end of June.  I doubt I will be taking part in the Summer Backlog Challenge this year - my own personal backlog challenge will be going on all year long anyway!

At the moment I'm not really sure what order this content is going to appear in - if I had to guess, I would say that the Sam & Max Season One review will be next, followed by the C64 Review Show, Monkey Island Mondays #2 and then Kameo, but the reality may turn out to be slightly different!

Yakuza 5 review

The Yakuza series is one that I've been interested in for quite some time now.  The first game in the series piqued my interest due to its apparent similarities with my beloved Shenmue, yet when I played the game myself I found the combat rather clunky and lost interest a few hours in.  Something brought me back though and over time I have acquired copies of all the other entries that have been released in the west.  I spent a fair bit of time with Yakuza 3 and really enjoyed it, but I set it aside for some vague time in the future when I would dedicate myself towards completing it properly.  That day never came, but in the meantime the hype over Yakuza 5 and the disappointment from long term fans that it showed no sign of being localised hadn't escaped my notice. 

When Sony finally did announce that the game would be released digitally on the PlayStation Network, I decided it was worth supporting and used some of my birthday money towards it.  Whenever I buy a new game I always have to try it out a little bit, even if I don't intend to play it all the way through there and then.  This is usually only the first few hours of the game, but I had so much fun playing Yakuza 5 that I ended up spending about 12 hours on it!  Still, after that first day and a bit of playtime, I did set it aside so I could concentrate on finishing Tales of Xillia.  Roughly one month later I came back to it though, and have now completed the game having spent about 75 hours on it in total.  Suffice it to say that I really enjoyed myself, and now firmly intend to go back and play the first four games, plus Dead Souls.  If you are curious about the Yakuza franchise and have never taken the plunge, let me attempt to explain why you should strongly consider giving it a go.

Plot and Character: 9 out of 10
Having watched some of the videos that go over the plot of previous games, it is apparent that these games can get rather convoluted and hard to follow.  That wasn't really the case with Yakuza 5 though, despite it being deep into a well established series.  The main protagonist of the games, Kazuma Kiryu, has moved from Tokyo to Fukuoka, changed his identity, and is just trying to make a living as a humble taxi driver.   That all begins to fall apart when the chairman of his former yakuza family cuts in line and gets into his taxi one day, in order to warn Kiryu that there is a war on the horizon between the Tojo Clan and the Omi Alliance.  From this point on his is gradually drawn back into the yakuza life yet again, and the plot deepens from there.  He is only one of five playable characters though, and after about 15 - 20 hours of playtime depending on how thorough you are with the side activities, the game shifts onto Taiga Saejima, who fights differently and has plenty of his own problems.

While there is enough mystery in the plot to keep you interested throughout the games long play time, it never becomes too hard to follow.  Also, by shifting things up every 20 hours or so, the game remains fresh.  Saejima's part of the story was my least favourite but I kept going in the knowledge that I would eventually get to play as three more characters after him.   His main side activity was hunting, which was a nice change of pace from all the fighting, but the opening hours of his chapter really dragged for me.  By far my favourite was Haruka.  She has been in the series since the very first game, where she started out as a little girl that Kiryu had to take care of.  Now she's about 15, and has been noticed by the head of a talent agency for pop idols.  She is in the very early stages of an idol career as week take control of her, preparing for the finals of a TV show called Princess League.  Her chapter was a lot of fun, and the rhythm based concerts and dance battles were a very nice change of pace.  This game really has three key strengths: the characters, the variety of gameplay, and the sense of fun.

Take that! A foot to the armpit.

Graphics: 8 out of 10
Yakuza 5 does look very good for the most part and the engine has obviously had an upgrade since Yakuza 3.  The key cut scenes of the game have had the most attention, with the character models looking extremely detailed and realistic.  Outside of these the rest of the game running in realtime is slightly less detailed and there are one or two rather ugly textures to be found, but overall this is an impressive looking PS3 game.  When things get really hectic there are signs of slowdown, but nothing that's too detrimental to the overall game play.

Sound and Music: 8 out of 10
The Yakuza series hasn't had Enlgish voices since the first game, and from what I heard when I tried to get into it all those years ago, that's no great loss, as it was truly terrible in places.  My untrained ear can't really tell if the Japanese actors are good at their jobs or not, but it all seems perfectly fine and having them speak their native tongue just makes the game feel more authentic.  There are some quite brutul sounding crunches in combat, and the move where Kiryu grates somebodies face on the pavement always makes me wince due to the unpleasant sandpaper noise that accompanies it.  There is some great music in the game as well, from the tunes that play while your in combat, the suitably cheesy ballads that you can belt out at the karaoke parlours, and the pop or dance tunes that Haruka performs to.

Harukaaaaaaaa-chaaaaaaan!

Game Mechanics: 8 out of 10
The Yakuza games are chiefly brawlers - kind of like a modern day equivalent of something like Streets of Rage.  There is a lot more to them than this though as I will attempt to explain.  When you first take control of a new character, their move set and abilities are fairly limited.  By beating random thugs that will come at you in the street or by taking down people in the story, you will earn experience points and level up.  Each time this happens you will be given three pips to spend on a variety of things, from extending your life bar, to learning a completely new move.   By the time you're getting towards the end of that characters chapter, he will be incredibly powerful and able to beat the shit out of most enemies, bar the bosses.  I was playing the game on the default Normal difficulty and never really had too much trouble in any particular fight.  You are given healing items from completing side quests and from random drops so even if I did get close to being defeated I could just down a Staminan Spark or something and be right back in the fight.  Those who are good at action games may want to go straight to Hard mode.

In addition to regular moves, each character also has their own array of heat moves.  You earn heat by successfully beating on your opponents, or by blocking incoming attacks.  Once the bar is filled you can then trigger some really painful looking attacks like the face grating one I mentioned earlier.  You can also pick up a large variety of background objects and use them as weapons as well, all of which have their own heat move associated with them.  So you could pick up a bicycle, beat somebody around the head a few times with it, throw it at them and them stomp on top of them for good measure.

If the combat was all the game had going for it then I would start to tire of it eventually, and this is pretty much what happened back when I tried to play the first game. The great thing about this series though - the later games at least - is the vast variety of things to do.  Aside from the taxi driving, hunting, pop idol business and other main side modes that each character has, there are also many more side activities.  You can go to a hostess club and attempt woo a pretty girl, you can go bowling, play darts, air hockey and billiards.  Virtua Fighter 2, Taiko no Tatsujin and UFO Catcher machines can be found in Club SEGA that are based in most of the cities, and there are a whole host of gambling games like poker, pachislots and more in there.  Plenty of things to break up the fighting.  All of the mini games are at least competently implemented as well, which is important. 

Just grin and bear it!

Innovation & Cleverness: 7 out of 10
While Yakuza 5 is building on the previous titles in the series, it does bring a lot of its own new stuff to the table as well.  The decision to allow you to play as Haruka and make musical performance the focus of her chapter instead of combat was a masterstroke.  Really a lot of the reason that I played all the way to the end is because I couldn't wait to see what new thing the game would throw at me next.  The story is good enough to back up the game play though, resulting in a highly polished experience.

Value and Replayabilty: 9 out of 10
As I mentioned in the intro, it took me 75 hours to get to the end of Yakuza 5 and while I did complete most of the sidestories for each character, I came nowhere near to doing everything that is possible to do in the game.  My overall completion rate was about 25%, so if you were truly determined to get 100% it would take a long long time indeed.  When you get to the end of the story for the first time you unlock two extra modes - one where you can play through the story again but with all of your levels and abilities intact from last time, and one where you can visit any city with any character and complete anything that you skipped while playing through the story.  So even when you're done playing the the game once, there's plenty to come back to.

Overall: 8 out of 10
Yakuza superfans will probably hate me for not giving this game at least a nine out of ten, but the combat can get somewhat repetitive and so I'm marking it down slightly for that.  This is based on my own enjoyment of the game after all.   I did have a lot of fun playing through the story though, a few dull moments aside, and all of the optional content was a ton of fun.  I definitely will be going back and playing through all of the previous games now, and any future titles such as Yakuza 0 and Yakuza 6 that will hopefully be brought over eventually.  If you have never tried this series before then jump on board, you're missing out on quite a lot!

Jetpack Joyride | Mini Review

I’ve got a shorter review for this week, and the game I’m going to be looking at is actually fairly old.  It is Jetpack Joyride – more specifically the Deluxe PS3 version.  I have put a ton of hours into both this version and the Android version on my Kindle Fire.  The game is fundamentally the same on both platforms  except that because it is part of Amazon’s Underground scheme it is 100% on their devices, including all DLC and coin packs that would normally cost you money elsewhere.  You many think that this is a good thing but when infinite coins are so easy to obtain, you can pretty much break the game for yourself and render it pretty pointless.  So if you have the willpower I would recommend not touching any of the free stuff at all, or if you know that you won’t be able to manage that, spend the paltry £1.39 asking price for the PS3 version and earn everything properly with the in game currency.   I’ll go into more detail about this later on in the review.

So then, the overall plot behind the game sees you take control of Barry Steakfries, the hero, who takes a prototype jet pack for a joyride.  In order to escape the laboratory with the purloined pack, you will have to first navigate 30,000 meters of deadly zappers and missiles, which is way, way easier said than done.  I’ve put quite a bit of time into the game and furthest I’ve managed to get is about the 4,500 meter mark.  This game is firmly in the “endless runner” category, except in theory it’s not actually endless.  From your point of view when you first start out, it may as well be though.  The layout of the lab changes each time, and before long you are careening along at a breakneck pace.   Eventually it will become unmanageable and you will make a mistake, bringing your run to an end.    While you’ve been dodging the many dangers though, you’ve been picking up coins, which can be spent in the Stash on a variety of things.   Probably the most useful are the Gadgets, which change up certain aspects of the game – but you can only equip two of these at a time.   They include stuff like a device that causes the missiles to misfire more often than not, and another that randomly turns certain coins into precious gems.   As you purchase gadgets from the earlier tiers, you will gradually unlock later ones with more useful stuff.  Then there are Utilities, which are one time use items such as hearts that can be used to resurrect you one time, and other items that will let you instantly pass a particularly tricky mission (more on these in a minute).

Awww, it's Mr Cuddles!!!

The Stash is also home a variety of clothing, different types of jet pack, and vehicle upgrades.   The clothing is purely cosmetic, but the other things may change up the gameplay a little bit.  Because you start with the machine gun jet pack, as you boost you will be inadvertently filling poor unsuspecting scientists full of lead as you go.  Most of the time that’s perfectly fine, but sometimes you may have a mission to not harm any scientists on a run.   By changing the jet pack you’ve got equipped – to a steam powered one for example, you can make it much easier to avoid scientist slaughter.  You still need to avoid crushing into them, of course, but that’s pretty straight forward if you have decent throttle control.   During a typical run through the lab you will find randomly place vehicle icons, which let you go on a rampage in a robot suit called Lil Stomper, or a mechanical dragon called Mr Cuddles, for example.  The upgrades mostly give you different skins to equip, but you can also buy magnet upgrades which will then attract precious coins.  Very useful indeed.     The items in the stash will go on sale periodically, and new items may appear from time to time.  Some of them, like the sleigh and the Santa outfit, are seasonal and available for a limited time only.  Others cost real money if you want them straight away, or if you are patient you can get them for free if you wait about 15 days.

The missions are part of what playing the game so addictive.    Usually you will have three assigned to you at the same time, and they include things like high-fiving a certain amount of scientists, having a near miss with a certain number of missiles, or gathering a certain number of coins.  Sometimes your target will be fairly high but can be spread over as many runs as you need in order to complete it – for example 5000 coins.  Other targets may be good for just one run, and so are a bit trickier to get.   Each mission has a star value of one to three, and these stars contribute to your level. Every time you level up, you get a bonus in coins.   Once you get to level 15, you will have finished that set of missions, but that’s not the end.  You are then awarded a medal and the whole process starts again.  There are many different mission types and they are randomised, so the chances of you getting the exact same ones are pretty remote.  There are 175 medals, so if you want to get all of them, it will take you a long long time indeed!   So in addition to just managing to get all the way to 30,000 meters, you also have the additional objective of earning all those medals.  For such a cheap game, Jetpack Joyride has a ton of content!  There is also a reward for coming back every day.   Every 24 hours, three tokens will appear that spell out S.A.M, which is short for Strong Arm Machine.  Once you get all three, you will be encased in a giant robot suit until you get hit by five missiles. The amount of coins that appear increase dramatically during this mode, so you can really bolster your coffers if you’re reaction times are good!  Once the S.A.M. has been destroyed and that run ends, you are then given a daily bonus.   If you do this every day for five days, you will be given a random outfit for free.

Make good use of the S.A.M. to earn a ton of extra coins.

The presentation of Jetpack Joyride is fantastic, with really well drawn and animated sprites and backgrounds.   There is a ton of detail and lots of little hidden things to uncover.  The tune that plays on a loop in the background is also extremely catchy, as are the remixed dub step and Christmas versions when you are in the S.A.M. and the sleigh respectively.   For such as cheap game you really can get a ton of play time out of it, if you get really hooked!  While there are items that are on sale for real money in the Stash, you are always given ways to obtain them for free if you just wait or save up the required number of coins, so the micro transactions are not evil in that regard like they can be in other games.  The great thing about the PlayStation version is that not only can you play it on your big screen TV, you can also play it on your Vita if you happen to own one with Cross Save!  The special Back to the Future content may be missing on Sony consoles (from what I can tell at any rate) but the base game is still great fun without it.   If you’ve never played it before, I urge you to download Jetpack Joyride on whatever compatible platform you own, and prepare to be addicted!

Overall: 9 out of 10