Doodle Jump is like Super Mario Bros. meets Galaga. (Think about it.)This game sucks.
Well, okay. This is a really well made game. The art is cute (even if it's not exactly to my tastes), the controls work really well (unless you're riding on the subway), and the level of polish displayed here is impressive (although what's with all the social networking hooks?! ...I'll be getting back to this complaint later). On a fundamental level, this is clearly a very successful iOS video game.
So, clearly, I hate it.
Don't get me wrong! I don't hate this thing just because it's successful, I hate it because this game is nothing but non-stop instant death from beginning to end. No matter how well you're doing, you're one event away from the entire game coming to an end.
I get that the idea here is quick pick-up and put-down gameplay, but... seriously? I'm surprised, honestly, that people are satisfied with this. A full minute of gameplay would be an epic session of Doodle Jump. There's no development or change or progress or anything. It's just:
Boing, boing, boing, dead.
Boing, boing, boing, dead.
Boing, boing, boing, next game!
But the beauty of it is that the fail event barely even registers — you die and two taps later you're right back at it bouncing some more, at nice easy levels so you get more success events.
ReplyDeleteI'd like it if there were midpoints or save points, so you could resume after a certain height. Or maybe there are and I'm just not good enough to get them.
Fun fact: Doodle Jump was made by two brothers from NYC. They're old though, in their 40s or something, grey hair.
Another fun fact: Their company, Lima Sky, has made a zillion games, most of which are disasters.
You're making it sound like a "glass half full versus glass half empty" sort of thing, which is sort of reasonable. I, however, am not reasonable, and I think this game is more like simply flipping a coin. At any moment your character has the same probability of living or dying.
ReplyDeleteThis seems to devalue the "success events" (seriously, what's with you and success events?) so that they're not earned, they simply occur. Yeah, you flipped the coin. Good for you.
The game could simply play itself and I'd have the same experience in the end -- it looks nice, quickly gets repetitive and doesn't change in any after the first moment you start playing the game.