I really wanted to like Penny’s Big Breakaway more than I did, and while it’s a pretty fun romp overall I never quite felt comfortable with the way Penny and her yoyo controls. Stiff on the ground and floaty in the air, I often found myself falling out of bounds when I felt I shouldn’t have. The game plays as a throwback to the late nineties when the genre of 3d platformer was still in its infancy and while undeniably charming (the soundtrack is astonishingly good!), especially if you grew up with the medium at this time, the adherence to recreate the experience of the end of the last millennium ultimately holds the game back. When you’re on a roll it’s tons of fun, but as soon as your momentum is broken the joy is replaced by frustrating trial and error and while the game never gets overly challenging it never quite hit a sweet spot for me either. Overall I can recommend the game but the fairly brief runtime (about eight hours) and somewhat unpolished aspects (at launch at least) compels me to recommend that anyone interested in “breaking away” should wait for the game to go on sale.
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