I have disagreed with Club Penguin's mobile vision for quite a while. When it was announced that the team planned to transfer every room onto their flagship Club Penguin app, I was very disappointed. Now that I have uncovered every mystery on Club Penguin, new content is the key ingredient that keeps me around. Why waste time remaking an entire game for a new platform when that time could be used to make brand new stuff?
Sled Racer, however, turns that around.
This game is exactly what I wanted from mobile Club Penguin: a reimagined or original game for the touch screen platform.
The gameplay for this app is simple but addictive and fun. While endless runners are very cliched at this point, this game has enough variety that it doesn't feel like a ripoff (the same can not be said for the Free Fall Disney apps). The controls for the game are very easy to learn and the game is very straight forward; there aren't lots of screens or numerous powerups to get.
That being said, this game removes a feature that has been essential to Club Penguin since the very beginning: user interactivity. Polo Field says that the team decided to not add a log in feature so that the game could get out faster. I agree with this decision to some extent; I think that developers should try and cut corners initially so they can get games out to their audience as quickly as possible. "Initially" is the key word there; I hope that the Club Penguin Team adds a log-in function, along with other features, such as multiplayer, in a future update. Trying to capture coins, while a little predictable in games like this, would add a new challenge and new incentive to the game. Imagine if exclusive clothing items could be collected on the slopes by running into them! Imagine if there were tasks that got you free items! Imagine if you got money for your total distance! There is so much potential that could make this game something really special. Even just having the ability to change your penguin's color would add just a little more personality to the game.
The art in this game is pretty good. The background, with the sky, mountains, moving Migrator, and Lighthouse, has a really cool design, though it would be cool if the time of day changed in future updates, or we could see different things in the distance with each run (What if it snowed sometimes?). The 3D designs of the rest of the game are reminiscent of the sole Club Penguin Wii game, Game Day, but are less refined than that nearly four year old game; your penguin kind of looks like a rag doll when it crashes. That being said, the 3D art is largely well done and looks pretty clean. The start screen also has some great new art, though I wish that new puffle would have been hidden a bit better.
The obstacles in this game are fairly good. While many are pretty similar to each other (namely all the log obstacles), there is a good variety and many are a great throwback to the original game. The Sabre-Toothed Fluffies are a nice reference to Herbert's cave in Operation: Hibernation and I hope more creatures - and other obstacles - are added in the future. I also like that obstacles are gradually revealed to the player as they continue playing the game.
The ads in this game don't really bother me that much, particularly since, beside the Disney app link on the home screen, all of them are for the Club Penguin app. The only exception here are the large popup ads. These ones obnoxiously take up the whole screen after every few rounds and won't allow you to leave them until a few seconds after they appear. This is troublesome when you are like me and press the "New Game" button immediately when it pops up; if you do this, the ad will appear just as you are starting your game, disrupting your game play and almost certainly insuring that you will crash without a chance to save yourself.
The only other gripe I have with this app is the unneeded separate app download. I'm no expert when it comes to making apps, but I think that all of the features of this app could have fit into the main Club Penguin app without making the download size gigantic. As I have discussed before, the main app's name of "Club Penguin" implies that everything that is on mobile for CP will be contained on just that one app. Why breakoff into a second app? Is it because there are no 3D games on the original app and they want to keep the art consistent in that respect? Is it because they didn't want to have a sign-in capability for this game while every single other mobile CP game does on that app?
Even with these small nuisances, Sled Racer is still a very fun game that is easy to use and puts a new spin on a classic game. This release makes me even more excited for the upcoming Puffle Wild app and is most certainly the first big win for Club Penguin this year.
Score: 8.5/10
As Billybob would say, Waddle On!
- Chillin43
The ads never bothered me anyway...
ReplyDeleteI believe the Sled Racer app was made for people that play app games CASUALLY. Like you could casually play the app without creating a penguin, that wouldnt be much of a trouble wouldnt it? Because if you would like it with a log-in feature then it would take a lot of time, and people WHO DONT PLAY CLUB PENGUIN BUT DOWNLOADED THE APP wouldnt like it too. The game is for casual play, just like most of the Miniclip games.
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