Developer: Gaijin Games / Choice Provisions
Publisher: Gaijin Games / Choice Provisions
This time I’m trying something a little different with this review in that this time I’m reviewing a series of games rather than each individual title. Why do this? The amount of times I play a sequel to a game and think “yeah, this is basically the same as before except for X minor change.”, it gets a little tedious and trying to write a review for those games can really be a struggle. So I thought I’d experiment a bit and see how that plays out.
So what are the Bit.Trip Runner games? Well, they’re a series of Auto-Runner games (meaning that the character runs without needing your input) set within the Bit.Trip universe. You play as Commander Video, at least in the beginning as other characters become available to play.
As the player it’s your job to tell Commander Video when to jump, duck, kick and block all the obstacles that will attempt to block his path.
The first game is 8bit in its style and has the most simple gameplay of the three games, simply get from the start of the level to the end while dealing with all the obstacles that will get in your way. This game features no checkpoints so if you get hit or fail to handle an obstacle you’re set all the way back to the start. There is also only one type of collectible to find that is a multiplier for the point score, collecting this also makes the background music more layered and complex.
Bit.Trip Runner 2 comes with the additional title of ‘Future Legend of Rhythm Alien’ is generally a more impressive affair all around. Graphically its far more advanced than its predecessor, not that that is overly important to an Auto-Runner, but it does make the whole thing a bit more engaging seeing all the strange backgrounds. There are now checkpoints part way through the levels so you don’t have to restart from the absolute beginning and there are now some extra collectibles in the form of gold bars and occasionally a key. The gold bars increase your score but are also required to ‘buy’ your way into certain levels. There are also secret branching paths to be found which is what the keys are for.
Finally we come to Runner 3 at first I thought this was no different than the previous title however I was wrong on that front. It is ‘mostly’ the same, but there are some key differences, for starters Commander Video (or whomever you unlock) has a double jump. There are also alternative routes you can take after having played through a level once. Vehicle sections are also a new feature, at first I thought these were simply just a reskin on the side scrolling running but later you actually control the vehicles in a 3D environment by skipping between lanes.
Of course I can’t not mention the VHS bonus levels that drop the Auto-Runner and are essentially little (but difficult) platform levels.
If I have a major complaint about this one its the graphics, or more specifically the foreground objects that can obscure what you’re doing. I feel the game is hard enough without adding in such annoyances.
I have to say it’s interesting to see this game series evolution over time and I won’t lie they’ve also gotten more than a little interested in checking out the rest of the Bit.Trip games since apparently their all connected.
