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Posted September 27, 2013 by Zeth in Eurogamer Expo
 
 

Putty Squad Hands-On Preview

puttysquad logo
puttysquad logo

Putty Squad might hold little sway or cache with a lot of gamers these days but there was a period of time back in the 90’s where System 3’s blue iconic character had the world at its non-existent feet.

We managed to secure a short play time with the newly updated and soon to be released Putty Squad on shiny 3DS XL.

Putty Squad is a light hearted puzzle platformer at heart.  You control the small blue blob of blue putty.  Moving the analogue stick will shift Putty back and forth along the horizontal plane.  Pressing down will flatten Putty out and allow absorption of other putties and certain enemy types around the levels.

For instance absorbing the little red putties around the level will help unlock the door to the next level.  Absorbing characters, like the rocket knight for instance, will help you past certain enemies and obstacles.  Left and right shoulder buttons will cause Putty to punch/attack in that direction.  Pressing X repeatedly will inflate Putty so he/she/it can reach higher parts of levels.  Finally thinks are rounded out with a jump button and a stretch button.  This stretch ability helps Putty move up and down obstacles, platforms, ladders etc.Putty-Squad

The game is still full of real charm and Putty, despite his plain and simple looks, is a loveable and engaging central character.  Despite the colourful and clean look of the game Putty Squad looks great, especially when you crank up the 3D effect on the screen.  In many ways it’s like the 3DS was the platform Putty Squad has been waiting for.  Multiple levels of bright and well realised levels of parallax scrolling zip by as you make your way through.

The hands-on we played seemed well optimised and slick which would hopefully mean that this was a production edition of the game that we were playing on and that a release date might not be far away – after all Putty Squad started as a 20 year celebration title for System 3 back in 2012.

Having played the original Putty loads and then repeatedly playing the Putty Squad demo on Amiga 1200 (the game was never released!) I feel confident in saying this incarnation of Putty Squad is spot-on when it comes to capturing the look, feel and fun of the original titles.  Control is as tight and responsive as you’d have hoped – not that Putty Squad is a twitch platformer like Super Meat Boy et all.

There could be some concern that older gamers might find the game less than challenging but, if the original is anything to go by, there should be plenty of levels to challenge players later in the game.

putty-squad-tutorial-inflate

So, Putty Squad might not be the Amiga 1200 title that never came out (yes, I am scarred by that!), but it does at least look interesting.  Capturing the essence of what the original Putty titles offered and translating it to the modern platforms.  Not sure how this will translate to the larger screen in this “next gen” climate we find ourselves in, but I’m certainly looking forward to seeing how Putty Squad translates to the Vita.

We’ll  be able to judge for ourselves if Putty Squad can cut it in this indie platformer filled world when the game ships soon on 3DS, Vita, PS3, PC and Xbox 360.


Zeth

 
Zeth is our EU ninja and Editor in Chief. He's been writing about video games since 2008 when he started on BrutalGamer. He's pretty old and has been a gamer since he played Space Invaders as a young boy in the 80's. His genre tastes lean towards platformers, point-and-click adventure, action-adventure and shooters but he'll turn his hand to anything.