Game #1138: Marsupilami: Hoobadventure

  Is it a Monkey? Is it a leopard?!

 I've never been much of a fan of the original TV show, so I don't know why I felt like buying Marsupilami Hoobadventure, but I'm glad I did. It may not look like it, but it's a Donkey Kong Country Returns clone, and a pretty competent one at that!

 You can play as any of three different Marsupilami, but the difference is only skin-deep as all three are pretty much identical. They can run, jump, punch, somersault-attack, ground pound and, just like Donkey Kong, turn their somersault-attack into a long-jump, the latter one feels pretty much identical to DK's, even being able to pull it off shortly after running-on-air. Sometimes, the Marsupilami will have to use their long tales to hang onto moving rings or disappearing rings, or maybe, to reach pelicans that work like DK's shooting barrels. It's a decent set of abilities, and they are robust enough to keep the game entertaining, as the challenges are fairly varied. There are three difficulty settings: Infinite hitpoints, three-hitpoints and one-hitpoint. 

 The game has about 28 total stages, divided in three different types: Adventure, Dojo and Bosses. Adventure stages are your basic left-to-right affairs, they have 5 feathers to collect and a hidden challenge room to find. Dojo stages are longer-but-easier challenge rooms, in which you must go through rings while avoiding red shapes under a time limit. There are three boss stages, and they are like Adventure stages but on auto-scroll. Challenge Rooms and Dojo stages, upon clearance, reward you with tickets that open up bonus stages in which you can collect a ton of fruit and thus earn a lot of extra lives. Feathers unlock optional levels. Upon beating a stage you unlock its time trial mode, which is identical but you are just trying to finish it faster.

 The difficulty is just right.... up until the final two stages. The final boss is brutal, but the previous stage, thankfully an optional, unlockable one is even harder. The difficulty spike is not even funny. On another note, the performance on Switch is... a bit sloppy. A game this rudimentary shouldn't be having so many dips, and yet here we are. It's completely playable, but sometimes it's hard to justify the dips as the visual don't look very taxing on the system. Heck, the game has a hard time keeping it at 30 most of the time. Thirty!

 Switch performance aside, I'd say that the game's biggest problem is the lack of rewards. The game is fun, but why am I collecting the feathers? There are about 89 total feathers, but the third, and last, optional level only requires 65. Why should I bother finding every Challenge Room if all I get is a ticket for the bonus levels? Why shouldn't I play the game on the easiest setting? Why should I even bother with Time Trials? Honestly, even something as dumb as more alternate skins would've helped.

 While I ended the write up on a negative note, the game is fine. It plays well, has a nice amount of variety to keep stages fun and it feels like a really solid throwback to classic platforming games.

 7.0