The Misadventures of P.B. Winterbottom -PC-
The Misadventures of P.B. Winterbottom -PC-
The Misadventures of P.B. Winterbottom is the “Dr. Seus” of 2d platform gaming. It plays well, it has a fun “indie” artistic style, and it narrative overlay is cleaver and witty. While it lasts, these misadventures are a great fun, unfortunately I plowed through this game is just a couple short hours. I would have liked to have seen a full scale adventure, but for what you pay for, it is well worth it.
In the game your objective is to try to get your character (who is a mix between Yogi Bear and Scrooge Mcduck) to collect all the pies on the screen. The premise sounds simple, but it will soon become apparent that some of these pies are tricky sons of a gun to collect.
The levels are separated into sets of levels. At the beginning of a set, the game will introduce to you a new game mechanic, and for the rest of the levels collecting pies will be become increasingly more complex. Collecting pies has never been this hard before! The game mechanics are fresh and intuitive. I will not give any of the game mechanics away, for it would ruin the whole mystique. The new game mechanics really set The Misadventures of Mr. Winterbottom apart from other generic puzzle side scrollers. I applaud the high standard of creativity.
Almost every puzzle is set in a static screen, there won’t actually be much side scrollin’ action in this game, only in the later levels you’ll be able to side scroll. I think this was because of the nature of these puzzles. They can get really tricky, and it is helpful to have the whole puzzle right in front of you at all times. I do prefer the classic side scroller, and many times the levels in this game felt like a puzzle level from “Tetris Attack” or “Yoshi’s Cooke”, I still enjoyed it.
As you run around as Mr Winterbottom, he controls reasonably well. He is not perfectly precise, but you rarely if ever will be punished for not being exact; your objective is to collect pies and as long as any part of you guy touches a pie, you’ll collect it. The whole game is based on puzzles and not perfectly executed maneuvering (even though some levels trick you into thinking so)
The story and narrative are reminiscent of popular children books. The phrasing rhymes, and come 2 lines at a time. There are still pictures that accompany every described location. I looked forward to the narrative as it came and I read and enjoyed every line.
The only real problem with The Misadventures of Mr. Winterbottom is that it is too short. I completed the game fully in less than 4 hours. Given, I am a wizard of sorts, but there just isn’t as much content as I would have liked. I can’t really complain cause I got the game for like $5 off of a Steam sale.
The Misadventures of Mr. Winterbottom is a great diversion with plenty of re playability: weather it be in attempts to get a better score / time or to watch someone else solve the puzzles for the first time, it is plenty of fun. I have suggested this game to a number of people, as I think it can be fun for a very broad # of people. Go and play you some Mr Winterbottom!
4/5
-Review by Pete Sept 24, 2010
