A Hop Nonetheless
HIGH The pea shooters.
LOW A stealth section in a sewer level.
WTF Being given the choice between a drip slot and, um, a drip slot.
I don’t know much about Luckshot Games, the developer of Big Hops, but I’d imagine that more than one member of the team has fond memories of playing Super Mario 64 around launch. Hop, the frog protagonist, has an expansive moveset which includes a wall run and the ability to sling himself around with his tongue, and the early joys of finding ways to navigate 3D spaces here evoke the feeling of triple-jumping across Bob-Omb Battlefield in the mid-’90s.
Those strong first impressions, however, soon make way for an experience that wears so many influences on its sleeve that it struggles to find an identity of its own.
Played from the third-person perspective, Big Hops‘ most inventive mechanics come in the form of “veggies” – various foods that Hop can throw to create a number of effects, often sprouting new structures within a level, like vines and tightropes. My personal favorites were the pea shooters that fire projectiles which Hop can then use to sling himself through the air.
Given that the veggies are often unlimited in supply and that the player can usually create as many structures as they like, and that said structures remain active until the player leaves the area, these mechanics are often pretty cheese-able. Still, it’s Big Hops‘ most promising thread, and things are at their strongest when forcing players to make inventive use of the veggies. Sadly, this is only for a small portion of the time.
3D platformer design tends to fall into one of two categories. Some simply task players with reaching the end of a level, but many of the most beloved genre entries have taken the collect-a-thon route, setting players loose in miniature sandboxes and gating progress behind how many goodies they can hoover up.
Big Hops arrives at an unholy union of the two. Progress is driven by story objectives, yet the levels themselves are often sprawling in scope, with players clearly intended to use Hop’s expansive moveset to poke at the edges of each map. Unfortunately, Luckshot largely falters at giving us anything of interest to find in these massive spaces.
The most common collectibles are little purple dots that can be periodically cashed in for either equippable upgrades or additional slots for said upgrades. One early such “drip” gave Hop’s slide considerably less traction, which made the movement mechanics even more pleasurable than they already were, and set too high a bar for this system. Most of the remaining drips seemed to make the limited variety of items easier to find – a variation of a common problem with videogame economies, wherein spending money rewards the player with nothing but more damn money.
The other major collectibles are coins that can be used to buy cosmetic items and such. Unfortunately, players’ access to the shop is dependent on where exactly they are in the story, and there’s a limit to how much money Hop can carry at once. If his wallet is full then players can’t collect more coins, and woe be the 3D platformer that forbids players from picking up items. Of all of the genre classics I want to be reminded of, Donkey Kong 64 is relatively low on the list.
It probably doesn’t help that Big Hops opens with two of the dullest possible biomes in which to set a videogame – a vast, open stretch of desert followed by a sewer level. (Said sewer section also includes a mandatory insta-fail stealth sequence, which in this industry is known as a double felony.) Things get a tad more interesting when we travel to a vibrant water world in the second half, but by then I was already feeling pretty checked out.
The blandness of the environments speaks to a prevailing issue with Big Hops, and one particularly devastating to any 3D platformer – it’s lacking much in the way of personality. The visuals are sharp and colorful but altogether rather flat and lifeless in appearance, and the music is bouncy and inoffensive without ever being catchy. And while I don’t expect the story to ever be the selling point in one of these things, I do expect some wit and humor in the dialogue, and this has none.
The voice work is also rather anonymous-sounding, which is especially surprising given that there are some established names like Steve Blum in the cast. Most of the characters kinda just sound like they’re being voiced by the same guy, with only an occasional generic regional accent to distinguish a few.
I really wanted to love Big Hops, since it’s clearly made by folks who share my fondness for the 3D platformer genre. But while that passion has birthed a terrific moveset, Big Hops is ultimately a selection of great mechanics in search of a tighter, more focused game.
Rating: 6 out of 10
Disclosures: This game is developed and published by Luckshot Games. It is currently available on PS5, Switch and PC. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the PC. Approximately seven hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode, and the game was not completed. There are no multiplayer modes.
Parents: According to the ESRB, this game is rated E and contains Crude Humor, Mild Fantasy Violence and Mild Language. I think there’s maybe a “damn” in the dialogue here and there, and that’s as offensive as it gets.
Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes available.
Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: This game offers subtitles. The subtitles can be resized. I never found that sound played an important role in navigating Big Hops. It is fully accessible.
Remappable Controls: No, this game’s controls are not remappable. Movement is on the left stick. Camera is the right stick. Jumping is A. Rolling and diving are X. The backpack is opened with Y. The right trigger is used to grab with the tongue, and the left triggered is used to crouch and climb walls.
The post Big Hops Review appeared first on Gamecritics.com.
