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IGN Review of Platypus
Want a mediocre side-scrolling shoot-em-up for your PSP? No? Well, what if I told you that all of the graphics were made out of clay? It's not as cool as there being real clay on your PSP (if that is indeed cool), but all of the graphics in Platypus were originally made in clay, then shot to become sprites in the game. It's totally claytastic. Still mediocre, but claytastic!
The clay graphics are obviously just a gimmick here. With all of the sprites on the PSP screen being truly tiny, you wouldn't know that these were originally molded by hand. When watching Wallace & Gromit you can sometimes see the fingerprints of the creators. With the ships in Platypus, you can definitely tell that they're different simply because of the different colors. So, if anything, Platypus makes use of a wide variety of colored clays.
Some of the levels will have the same short, short section of sprites that is constantly repeated. Just like good old Fred Flintstone could run infinitely through his house, the ships here are doomed to the same Groundhog's Day feeling. And to make everything so much more fun, there are clouds that reach as high as halfway up the screen that hide the ships. You just haven't lived until you've dipped down and been blown up by colliding with an invisible enemy.
The special abilities are uninspired as well, with very little to them. By shooting up special clusters of ships, a colored star can be released. Each color represents a different power-up and these can be changed by shooting them. Sadly, these power-ups aren't all that fantastic and they can't be leveled up. Getting two red stars in a row simply means that you're doomed to being stuck with the horrible rockets for 20 more seconds. That's all because, joy of joys, the power-ups are limited in time. And don't bother looking for a special bomb, because it isn't here.
While the ships are easy to spot and avoid, many of the bullets can be tricky to spot. The typical bullet is a tiny red dot that slowly moves across the screen. There's not a ton of contrast to help distinguish the bullets from the rest of the environments and so it's a blast of random joy when your ship bursts into an orange clay explosion for what seems to be no reason at all.
©2006-12-07, IGN Entertainment, Inc. All Rights Reserved
The clay graphics are obviously just a gimmick here. With all of the sprites on the PSP screen being truly tiny, you wouldn't know that these were originally molded by hand. When watching Wallace & Gromit you can sometimes see the fingerprints of the creators. With the ships in Platypus, you can definitely tell that they're different simply because of the different colors. So, if anything, Platypus makes use of a wide variety of colored clays.
Some of the levels will have the same short, short section of sprites that is constantly repeated. Just like good old Fred Flintstone could run infinitely through his house, the ships here are doomed to the same Groundhog's Day feeling. And to make everything so much more fun, there are clouds that reach as high as halfway up the screen that hide the ships. You just haven't lived until you've dipped down and been blown up by colliding with an invisible enemy.
The special abilities are uninspired as well, with very little to them. By shooting up special clusters of ships, a colored star can be released. Each color represents a different power-up and these can be changed by shooting them. Sadly, these power-ups aren't all that fantastic and they can't be leveled up. Getting two red stars in a row simply means that you're doomed to being stuck with the horrible rockets for 20 more seconds. That's all because, joy of joys, the power-ups are limited in time. And don't bother looking for a special bomb, because it isn't here.
While the ships are easy to spot and avoid, many of the bullets can be tricky to spot. The typical bullet is a tiny red dot that slowly moves across the screen. There's not a ton of contrast to help distinguish the bullets from the rest of the environments and so it's a blast of random joy when your ship bursts into an orange clay explosion for what seems to be no reason at all.
©2006-12-07, IGN Entertainment, Inc. All Rights Reserved