Game #970: Jumper - Griffin's Story

  Made me want to jump out of a six story building.

 First question is why. Why did I buy Jumper: Griffin's Story? Because it was only 2 bucks. Two bucks. Why not? Really. The question should be why not. Second question is why did I play it? Simple, I had to arrange my game collection to fit the Wii games I recently finished and I had to move around my unplayed PS2 games so I chose to make room by playing a few short shovelware titles... such as Jumper: Griffin's Story.

 First, the good... it reminds me of XIII. The character models are terrible, Griffin isn't even holding a weapon as his hands are pretty much open, but the cell-shading and the simple, colorful textures makes everything look exactly like XIII, so it's a decent looking game... in static screenshots. Sadly, the game's low budget can be seen everywhere else. Floaty movement, so much so that if you 'fall' Griffin will run on air a few seconds before falling down, like a Looney Toons cartoon. Or the fact that the game has no main menu, you pop in the disc and the game just starts. Oh, and mercifully, it lasts less than hours. That's right, this console game is less than two hours long. Amazing.

 So, this is a beat'em up kind of game. You can hold down R1 and move the right analog stick to teleport, but the instances that require you to teleport are rare and far in between. All the better, because it's kinda clunky. Combat is a matter of mashing square or X and Griffin will teleport all over the place landing attacks. You get a powerful super move, that refills as you land attacks, that you use with O... but what super you produce is random(Depending on how many gauges you filled), and some are infinitely more useful than others... even if enemies can block them very easily.

 So... combat is just a matter of mashing buttons and watching things happen. For the most part, stages are very easy... but bosses are a pain in the neck. It's like they have no downtime between their attacks, so I had to employ boring hit-and-run tactics. Since they inevitably landed hits that took huge chunks of my health.... I cheesed them by running in circles around them, because for whatever reason we get regenerating health. In other words, easy stages, hard bosses And if you die you have to replay the last checkpoint again, and it could be a loooooong while before you get another try to fight the boss. The second-to-last stage is brutal, with basic enemies that block most attacks and deal huge amounts of damage. Had to resort to running in circles to heal a lot of times.

 There are hidden collectibles in the game, but the amount to little more than bragging rights, and you can collect weapons. Besides the flame launcher, I really didn't notice much difference between weapons. The level design is just... boring and forgettable. It also has some neat little details like the fact that you can walk through fire. Nay, you have to WALK through fire to finish a stage, but the fire doesn't hurt you.

 Jumper wasn't a good movie, but boy oh boy, it's an even worse game. Shoddy gameplay that feels cheap at best but is broken at worst sometimes might get a chuckle out of the player due to how bad it is, but the rest of the game is completely boring and lifeless.

2.0