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LocoCycle (Xbox 360) Review

 
LocoCycle (360) Review
LocoCycle (360) Review
LocoCycle (360) Review

 
At a Glance...
 

Formats: Xbox One, Xbox 360 (reviewed)
 
Genre: ,
 
Year:
 
Publisher:
 
Developer:
 
Final Score
6.5
6.5/ 10


User Rating
no ratings yet

 

We liked?


  • Funny (in that purposely bad, over-the-top sort of way)
  • Live action cutscenes!

Not so much?


  • Gameplay is repetitive
  • Unique sense of humor might not be for everybody


Final Fiendish Findings?

LocoCycle is ridiculous, and honestly quite repetitive, but the style and sense of humor are charming.

0
Posted April 18, 2014 by

 
Full Fiendish Findings...
 
 

LocoCycle (360) Review

Lococycle is a dumb game.  In fact, it’s not just a dumb game, it’s an extremely dumb game.  But developer Twisted Pixel Games is aware of that — dumb games are sort of their bread and butter.

LocoCycle has been around for a while, since November for the Xbox One, but the Xbox 360 version is relatively new, having been released as an Xbox Live Arcade title back in February.  If you’ve read any of the Xbox One reviews or heard any of the word of mouth, it’s likely all true, and you really shouldn’t expect many differences or improvement to have been made to the Xbox 360 version.

Despite walking into this review knowing that I would need to set my expectations a little lower, I still came away liking it more than not.

LocoCycle (360) Review

Live action cutscenes bookmark LocoCycle’s gameplay, and are peppered throughout the game between its many levels.

At its best, LocoCycle’s gameplay is repetitive and fairly average.  The story’s plot revolves around a mechanic named Pablo and the sentient super motorcycle I.R.I.S.

LocoCycle plays out as a sort of on-rails-shooter-meet-brawler, where you, as the sentient bike, encounter hordes of bad guys on the way to saving the world.  You’ll blasting them out of the sky, as well as engaging them in melee combat.  The controls are simple, the I.R.I.S. continues to drive as you steer the direction, using the controller’s buttons for a variety of types of attacks. Pablo, who has unfortunately gotten his foot caught in I.R.I.S.’s rear fender and is dragged along the ground throughout the entire game, can also be used as a weapon.

Even without going into more of the details, you can hopefully tell that LocoCycle is extremely ridiculous and over-the-top.  But to me, the sense of humor is by far the game’s greatest strength.  The jokes themselves felt amateurish, and were filled with stale generalizations and overused stereotypes — like an episode of Saved by the Bell — but the sheer outlandishness of some of the situations and conversations with both charming and funny.  Comedy is a dangerous weapon to wield, and a difficult thing to master especially in video games, but I think that Twisted Pixel does a pretty good job at being funny and doing so in unconventional ways.

The game’s many cutscenes have a unique flair about them, and in the typical Twisted Pixel fashion they’re told using live action video with real actors and locations.  The acting itself is downright horrible with more than a few moments of obvious overacting, but — dammit — I liked it.  It made me laugh and it made me smile.

I’m struggling with the decision of whether or not I recommend purchasing it.  As a currently priced at $10 on Xbox Live, there are certainly worse games available at or above that price.

I guess it all comes down to whether or not $10 to you is an acceptable amount to pay for a game that hasn’t received the best reviews.  If I hadn’t been given the opportunity to review LocoCycle, I probably wouldn’t have purchased it on my own, having heard the word-of-mouth about the Xbox One version.  But I am glad that I did play it, because I enjoyed it more than I thought that I would.  But… I enjoyed the game’s stupid sense of humor and the live action cutscenes more than I did actually playing the game.

So, do you see where I’m coming from?  Thankfully, I can straddle the fence here and suggest you download the trial for LocoCycle and judge it for yourself.  But you deserve an answer, so… in the end, as a $10 game, I think it’s worth taking a chance.  If you’re the patient type, I’d also recommend keeping an eye on the weekly sales for Xbox 360 games. Perhaps LocoCycle will end up on it, at which point, picking it up is an absolute no-brainer.

LocoCycle (360) Review

If it had been priced any higher, it’d probably be easier not to recommend LocoCycle.  But I love Twisted Pixel’s games, because of their unique style and humor, especially Splosion Man and The Gunstringer, and if you’re in the same boat as I, maybe you’ll be able to look past the game’s shortcomings and enjoy the product as a whole with all of its hilarious ridiculousness.


Troy Benedict

 


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