Oozi: Earth Adventure Episode 1 review: Going through the motions

Back in the 90s, just about every company wanted to brand itself with a “cool” mascot, and the result was a panoply of 2D platformers of varying quality. Arguably the two most endearing are Mario and Sonic, characters whose early adventures are remembered fondly for their precision and power-ups in the case of Mario, and speed and attitude for Sonic. But, for every beloved Donkey Kong, there was a crateful of Bubsys, Aero-the Acrobats and Awesome Possums. Oozi does its best to channel the former group’s legacy and is a decent platformer, but it really lacks an identity of its own and comes off feeling a bit too derivative to be really memorable.

Oozi, a tangerine-colored alien has crash landed on a foreign planet and somehow misplaced his equipment and spaceship. It’s impossible to deny the game’s very impressive 2D artwork as the lush environments and bright world look fantastic. There’s a nice array of spiders, snails, fish and other assorted wildlife content to pace back and forth waiting for Oozi to cross their paths. But with his fishhook grimace and his lumbering trot, Oozi is about as charismatic as a wad of chewing gum stuck to your shoe. Of course a little bit of solid level design can overcome even the blandest of characters, but as I plowed through the five levels, I found the experience to be more methodical than nostalgic. It was competent, but not compelling.

Mechanically, the game is fine. Oozi’s momentum took some time to get accustomed to, but the controls were adequate. The real problem is that the experience felt extremely dumbed down and simplistic. The first two levels featured enemies that walked back and forth and died when I jumped on their heads. That’s it. Additional enemy types and mechanics were introduced in later levels, such as a pound move to dislodge boulders and a double jump, but we’re not exactly talking about the cutting edge of innovation here. Still, once it wasn’t afraid to actually be challenging, some of the platforming segments were fun.

The other real issue is that the levels are extremely linear, and branching paths quickly dead end into massive piles of stars, the game’s version of coins that can be collected to acquire additional hitpoints. With no actual power-ups and no hidden areas, there just was never a compelling reason to explore those alternate routes. After three levels of exploring every crevice only to find more stars than Mario could handle on a binge, I gave up and stuck to the main path. What’s the point of exploring if there isn’t even the slightest hope of finding anything useful?

The same calming, soothing tune played for the entire game, even during the final boss. Speaking of which, why weren’t there any sound effects to acknowledge that I attacked or defeated that wacky spider? I would have felt as if the fight took place in the vacuum of space were it not for the same harp tune that played the whole time.

Oozi is a really great looking game that does some things really well. The later levels in particular had some fun platforming once the game got over the hand-holding and all of the abilities were unlocked. But, its complete lack of power-ups and hidden areas destroyed any desire for exploring the impressive environments, and it takes a bit too long to get even slightly interesting. It’s not bad, but it’s not particularly great either; but there is a nice foundation for Episode 2 to build on and turn this into a memorable series with a few new abilities and improved level design.

Rating:

Oozi: Earth Adventures Ep. 1 was purchased for 80 MS Points ($1). You can download a free demo on the Xbox Live Marketplace.