Review: The Adventure Pals

For several years, Massive Monster studio has created browser-based Flash games, which published on Kongregate and Armor Games. Among them was Super Adventure Pals - a simple platformer about a boy jumping on a giraffe and getting into a variety of locations. The idea appealed to both developers and the audience, and therefore the second part was decided to do more and release on several platforms.

The story in the sequel begins with the fact that on the birthday of the father of the protagonist gives that giraffe, and then turns out to be kidnapped by a certain Mr. Bee. The villain tries to turn all the elderly inhabitants of this strange world into walking hot dogs. Yes, in this game everything is built on an absurd humor - get ready to meet a whale, which is complex because of its nudity, a team of chanterelles, alcoholics, voting pirate elections and other unexpected creatures and personalities. 

Fortunately, rolling your eyes from the stupidity and stiffness of local jokes is not necessary - many of them at least funny and surely like fans of the animated television series "Time of adventure", which was clearly one of the main sources of inspiration for the authors. Bright visual style, attention to detail and funny animation excellently raise the mood, so you spend time in The Adventure Pals  with great pleasure, even if from time to time you notice some shortcomings in the gameplay. 

Gameplay authors tried to make as much as possible saturated - even though the project is a standard platformer, the main character has to fight with a variety of opponents, collect coins, open chests, look for secrets and solve simple puzzles. The combat system is as simple as possible: the blow is always carried out by the same button, and if the enemy is caught large or armed with a shield, you can dodge his attack by jumping back in time.

In the game even added a counter combo - the more strokes in a row you make, the more experience you get for the fight. And with the help of experience, levels are raised, so that the character acquires new skills. For example, the talking stone, haunting the hero almost from the very beginning, will be with the purchase of a certain ability to fly around and inflict damage on the opponents. You can increase the backpack, increase the number of things dropping from the chests, replenish the list of counter-attack tactics - there are a lot of options, and more than once I caught myself thinking that I've been choosing for too long between the three proposed improvements. 

One of the drawbacks of The Adventure Palsis associated with the complexity - lovers of something more difficult can get bored a little at the very beginning of the passage. The boy has a fairly large stock of "lives", so he can withstand about five strokes, and in his arsenal often appear first-aid kits, almost completely restoring health. These "healers" can be bought from traders after each mission, and their cost is so small that the lack of money I have never felt. Although in a situation where one wound would lead to death, I did not get - if you pass levels carefully and do not turn out time after time in a crowd of enemies, you do not have to die at all.

If you do not count opponents and "bosses", it's almost impossible to die from something. When falling in the abyss or on the thorns, the talking stone will revive the character near the same place (the hero will lose only a part of his health). As you pass, there will be bouncing hot dogs, throwing mines, but they can be quickly disposed of with the help of a stone. All sorts of exploding blocks and other gameplay innovations are also not dangerous. The game is not too easy and sometimes requires concentration, if you do not want to die and start the whole stage anew, but a slightly more complicated regime would still not interfere. 

Stickers are used in The Adventure Pals only to fill a book with stickers and no value does not represent (unless you "want" to get). Cupcakes are a little more useful - if you give them to a cat in any region, it will swallow them and take an egg, which will reveal a random object for customizing each of the characters. From the caps worn by the characters, there is also little use, but the fact that the headgear is not shown initially and remains a secret until unlocked makes the pursuit of them quite fascinating.

The levels in The Adventure Pals are more than a hundred, and they are scattered across five dissimilar regions. On the world map there are not only missions, but also shops, arenas and tiny settlements with outstanding residents. Although the content of these instructions is always different (someone asks you to find a lost letter, someone needs clothes, someone - a few berries or buckets with sand), pay attention to them during the passage is not necessary. Everything here falls out and is without much effort, since either it is hidden in chests, or lies not far from the well that carries to the next location of the well.

The authors clearly invested a lot of energy in making each mission unique. Then there are toasters, throwing the hero up. Then there are self-destructing blocks starting to blink, you can barely touch them, and we have to cling to them and quickly jump aside to get to the nearest islet. Fights also do not bother - some enemies are armed with shields, which are destroyed by several strikes, others call on small comrades-in-arms and hide from the player on the upper platforms. There are even spectacular episodes when, after your blow, an exploding creature flies into someone else, filling the screen with beautiful special effects.

One of the main features of the game is a local cooperative. The joint mode is an excellent opportunity to go through the game with the child: he will certainly be delighted with such a colorful platformer. In the company to think about the death of the characters do not have to - the deceased hero is resurrected next to a friend in a couple of seconds. But the cooperative is made inadequately - the second player simply follows the first tail, not possessing any unique features and really not helping. All the primitive puzzles are solved by one player, the tactics of the opponents do not change, and there are also some zones where the hand of help would be useful.

Rate:8/10