I would probably give Canabalt a
higher score if I wasn't playing Bit.Trip Presents Runner 2: Future
Legend of Rhythm Alien (review pending) at the moment. Canabalt is
really cool and fun, but I feel like Runner 2 is better in most ways,
with a few exceptions.
Canabalt is an infinite runner. I
think it is one of the first. You play as a guy in a business suit running on
rooftops. You jump from rooftop to rooftop as you automatically run
faster and faster. The only control you have is when you jump and how
high/long you jump. Holding the button down makes the leap longer and
higher, while tapping it quickly produces a quick hop.
You're running because the city is
under attack. There are giant robots in the background running amok,
and sci-fi aircraft are flying by at high speed as well. As you are
propelled forward, you must time your jumps to make it to the next
rooftop (or crane, or billboard). Missing means instant death. You go
until you die, the goal being to make it a longer distance. The game measure how far you get in each run in meters. It keeps track of how long your best run ever was and how long your most recent run was. When you
die, the game very specifically tells you what happened ("You ran 329 meters before somehow hitting the edge of a crane"). Basically,
there is a message for any and all of the strange ways you will die
in the game. A very nice touch.
There are a lot of interesting
obstacles that pop up as you go. There are buildings that collapse as
you run across them. There are tall buildings that require you to
jump through a window and run through a floor of the building and
jump out of the other side (I find this especially difficult). There
are bombs that drop out of the sky and land in front of you that you
need to jump over. There are also giant objects that sheer buildings
right in half right before you go to jump on them. I can't figure out
if they are giant missiles or giant robot arms or what. It happens
really fast and you either die or run away from it and it is far
behind you. There are also boxes, chairs, and other small obstacles
that you can run through but slow you down if you do. I've found that
hitting them to slow down on purpose if you get going really fast is
a necessity.
That's the whole game. It's sublimely
simple and very addictive. Once you start playing, you want to give
it “one more go...” over and over until you've played a lot
longer than you thought you would. Breaking your record is thrilling,
as is the many times you will just barely make it through an obstacle
or over a tight jump. You'll run along a long building as it
collapses and just barely jump up to the next one as it sinks below
the bottom of the screen, or slow yourself down too much by hitting
boxes and then barely be able to make that next long jump, or go on a
long run only to have a building ripped out from under you by a
falling obstacle...but then you miraculously make it and keep going!
You will also die a million times, but that just spurs you on to keep
going. Quitting can be difficult. I had to use caution when writing
this review that I didn't just play and play without writing.
The graphics are really great pixel
art done in just a few shades of grey. The animation is really great. Your character parachute rolls really
smoothly after long falls and flails his limbs wildly during long
jumps. The whole screen shakes as huge ships fly by just overhead at
high speeds. The way bombs drop in and then explode if touched is
really great looking, and when buildings collapse or are suddenly
chopped up by falling stuff, it looks and feels really awesome.
A big part of that feel comes from the
sound design. Despite the pixelated graphics, the sounds (shattering glass, rapid footsteps, bombs falling from the sky, buildings being
torn apart, grunts of exertion) are designed to sound realistic. This is an interesting
choice that adds a lot to the game.
So do the backgrounds and various
graphical touches. There always something crazy to look at in the
background, be it a giant robot, a million varieties of smashed
buildings and structures, or... what is that floating in the sky?
Birds sometimes fly off of rooftops as you run by and debris falls
off buildings as they collapse. And what made those massive claw
marks in that billboard? Great attention to detail.
There are three music tracks you can pick
from the main screen before starting your run. They are all appropriately epic and/or fast paced and/or exciting, or at least they start slow and build up to epic. All three are worth listening too. I would rotate them as I played.
The main problem with this game, if
you want to say it is a problem, is that there isn't really a reason
to keep playing it for any period of time. Once I played for a few
days, I didn't feel the need to fire it up again. I can tell that I
will probably play it randomly from time to time over the years when
I see it there on my hard drive, but I won't be seeking it out on any
regular basis. And that's fine, really. There should be some games
like that. This game is simple and fun, but not super deep. I can't
really knock it for that. But comparing it to Bit.Trip Runner 2,
which I invariably must, it comes up a little short, as Runner 2 has
so much that you want to do and unlock, not to mention how beautiful
it sounds and how great and varied it's gameplay is, but more on that
in its own review in the future. Runner 2 also throws you back into
the action almost instantly when you mess up, while Canabalt has you
sit through an auto-save screen that's a few seconds longer than it
should be (and shouldn't trigger if you don't beat a record, as there
are no other stats being tracked). There is also some slowdown when playing on PSP, usually at the start of a level where it won't mess you up.
One thing Canabalt has that Runner 2
doesn't that I really like is procedurally generated levels. Every
time you play, things will be different, and you will run into new
situations that surprise and challenge you even after you've played
for several hours. Runner 2 features stellar pre-made levels, but it
would be really cool if it had some randomly generated content or a
random mode t0o, as the emergent situations that pop up in Canabalt
are really awesome and I can tell that awesome situations would come
up in Runner 2 as well.
I feel like it's hard to rate Canabalt
on my scale as for me it's a game you play every once in a great
while for a few obsessive sessions. I guess it's a Great Game, tier
3. I want to say that it should have more content or trophies or
something, but its lack of all that in favor of pure, focused
gameplay is an asset as well. It's a different type of game in that
way. Oh, and in case you are wonder or want to compare yourself to me, my longest run (so far) is 12,177 Meters. Beat that! Actually, I have no idea if that would be considered good or not.
