Super Lucky's Tale

 

3d platforming Humble Bundle?! I'm in!

Released: 2018

Developer: Playful studios

Publisher: Microsoft

Gameplay Stats: 15 hours, 58/58 achievements

So Humble Bundle put out a set of 3d platformers with Hat in Time being the most expensive of the lot. I've been kind of itching to play one of these kinds of games for a while so I picked this one because it appeared to have a sequel in the bundle as well (New Super Lucky's Tale).

Aesthetics: The music is decent but pretty forgettable, it just doesn't have a whole lot of bounce to it like many of the greatest platformers have. Nothing sounded bad, but I also don't really remember any of it (apart from the island DLC evil tune) despite playing with audio 100% of the time. The sound effects weren't really very good and definitely got repetitive, thankfully I could turn them down. The characters in this game are super cute! I really enjoyed the look of the world, it reminded me of like a Spyro Remastered Trilogy sort of vibe. Very much like an old school game that went weird with shapes/objects because of graphical limitations but then turned it into a style. I don't think Lucky is that old of a series, but they nailed the visual vibe here. Very cute!

Plot: It's a platformer, not much going on here. Pretty normal for the genre. "Go complete X series of levels to restore/save the Macguffins!" Definitely nothing Celeste level here.

Gameplay: The jumps were a bit floaty but not bad, I think this characteristic saved my bacon a couple of times when I was getting greedy/rushing around. The movement other than jumping is digging/tunneling which feels pretty good too. I really wish there was some way to speed up though, the walking was pretty slow for a platformer. No run or long jump to speak of here. I was also a little disappointed that you didn't get any more moves as the game went on. Run, jump, dig, and attack is all there is. Definitely a bit on the simplistic side of platformers.

Overall I feel kind of middling about my time here. I enjoyed the main part of the game which took about 10-12 hours. But finishing off the achievements consisted of gathering about 300% more coins than I finished the entire game with. I did it listening to podcasts/news, but the time still drug on. Seriously though, I collected ~27k coins to complete the game and the final achievement was to collect 100k coins. During this achievement grind I found out that New Super Lucky's Tale was actual a remake of this game with a better camera and with that last achievement removed. I believe they also added better movement. Really wish I'd done some Googling before I decided to play this game!