Watching Comic Jumper is fun. Playing it, not so much.
Cons: Gameplay is repetitive and often recycled; Controls don't feel responsive enough; Not much depth; Bosses take too long to kill; Cheap moments cause frustration; Brawling flat-out sucks; It's tough to see what's going on in the manga levels
When Comic Jumper was announced, I jumped right on board. Twisted Pixel, the company behind the enjoyable and humorous Splosion Man, was making a game parodying all sorts of comics. Not only that, but they were trying to infuse it with a variety of different gameplay styles, and their main characters were incredibly interesting.
In retrospect, I should have been a little less hasty when purchasing this repetitive, cheap, and generally disappointing, game.
But what could have gone wrong since Splosion Man? Well, Splosion Man was a very simple game (so simple that only one button was needed to play it). So is Comic Jumper. But whereas Splosion Man kept adding new features and gradually ramping up the difficulty with smart level design, Comic Jumper keeps a consistent difficulty, doesn't introduce many new mechanics or enemies, and feels like it drags on.
Splosion Man also had strong controls. Although you only ever used one button, that was all you needed; you could bounce off of walls, fly through the air, and kill those pesky scientists with just as much precision as you needed. Unfortunately, Captain Smiley (the protagonist) is not so limber. His movement feels sluggish, and his turning speed is like that of a tank turret. This in itself isn't an issue: if Twisted Pixel wanted, they could have made individual encounters a matter of carefully overcoming Smiley's restrictive movements to outsmart the enemies. Or perhaps they could have made the game focused on clearing out all the enemies efficiently, since movement is not a viable option. Unfortunately Comic Jumper won't have any of that; it wants to be like Contra and Metal Slug.
This instantly becomes an issue when, like the games that inspired it, Twisted Pixel starts putting in high numbers of enemies that Smiley has barely any chance of dodging. It becomes even worse when the majority of the enemies take more than a few bullets to kill, thereby giving them the chance to clutter the screen with projectiles, and also inadvertently making Smiley's gun feel incredibly weak. Bosses take absurd amounts of damage as well, with a couple encounters requiring you to keep firing at the boss nonstop for a few minutes. And should you die during the boss fight, you have to start the whole thing over again. Thankfully lives are infinite and checkpoints pretty frequent outside of boss fights. Nonetheless things start getting cheap quick and the game's difficulty skyrockets (though it doesn't get much harder once you get over the initial hurdle).
Unfortunately these 2-D shooting sections are the deepest, most common, and most engaging parts of the game. At times you switch to a full 3-D on-rails shooter segment, which is arguably as good as the 2-D section, although the same issues frequently persist, and the crosshair moves too slowly. At a couple moments you also need to perform quick-time events. Luckily these are easy enough not to be frustrating, but they aren't common or deep.
The worst part of the gameplay goes to melee fighting, hands down. For some reason, Captain Smiley puts away his gun from time to time to fight with his fists (or a sword in the manga chapter of the game). Here Smiley also loses the ability to jump and is basically given 3 options: attack, attack in both directions (doing minimal damage, but knocking foes back), or use the screen-clearing help button (which is hilarious, but not likely to be in your possession for very long). These fighting sections don't take more than 5 seconds to expose how shallow and repetitive they are. And they also get frustrating when you start getting grappled repeatedly later on.
Although the fighting sections are the most shallow and repetitive, the other sections fall victim to the same issue. Enemies, hallways, bosses, you name it, are recycled, making even the fun fights boring when you repeat them again and again. And although you are able to upgrade your guns, health, etc. between missions, the impact of most of these upgrades feels negligible (especially considering their high prices), and none of them fix the issue of depth. Since you get one weapon and the ability to jump for most of the game (help power-ups aren't given that frequently), there isn't much strategy to the game besides dodge, point, and shoot. Even Geometry Wars, a game with only one arcade-style level and two active buttons, has more depth thanks to power-up management and a variety of enemies.
If this all sounds bad, then it should, because Comic Jumper has a tendency to wear out its welcome. The core mechanics aren't bad, and some fights are legitimately fun; the game just doesn't know when to quit (which makes it both impressive and sad that it still only takes 4-6 hours to beat). If I could, I would have rated the game far harsher on gameplay alone.
However, I can't, since the presentation actually does a lot to make the game more fun in this case. In Comic Jumper, Captain Smiley has fallen into hard times as his comic loses its fanbase and supply of income. Luckily for him, the team at Twisted Pixel helps him relaunch his career, permitting he makes some cameo appearances in other comics to earn money. Thus begins the hilarious, frequently fourth-wall breaking, story.
It's obvious that the team at Twisted Pixel had a lot of fun making this game (which is strange, given how un-fun it can be to play). The concept is ridiculous and only gets weirder; the dialogue and characters are enjoyable, particularly the back-and-forth between Smiley and the Star on his chest; and the parodies are legitimately great. Each type of comic, whether it be the Conan-esque fantasy comic, the bright and colorful '60s crime-fighting comic, or manga, features tons of little details and ideas that make them quite enjoyable to watch. The way that Twisted Pixel handles the censorship of the '60s comics in particular is hilarious.
Twisted Pixel also handles the art styles of each comic rather well. Although the overall game has a standard, low detail, cel-shaded look, each level does a great job of capturing the vibe of the comics that inspire it. The fantasy comic feels pretty rough and serious, the '60s comic features highly contrasting colors, and the manga is overly cutesy, has poorly animated mouths (intentionally), and is in black-and-white. The black-and-white makes the manga action a little harder to follow at times, but other than that, the art behind Comic Jumper emulates a variety of styles with great success.
Should you like Comic Jumper, there's plenty to keep you playing for a while, between the high scores, upgrades, and neat bonus content. However, on a second play through, the dialogue and styles aren't fresh any more, and I don't know how many people will find the gameplay strong enough to warrant replaying (I certainly didn't). While Comic Jumper's gameplay isn't entirely bad (it's merely mediocre), the game proves to be much more enjoyable to watch then to play.
Which makes you wonder why Twisted Pixel didn't just make a comic book instead.