Rating of
3/5
The Platformer with Too Much Plot
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 08/15/14
“Puppeteer” first caught my eye with its launch trailer, which made the game look like a professionally-produced expansion pack for Sony’s amazing ‘LittleBigPlanet’ series. Being the fan of that franchise that I am, I snapped up “Puppeteer” without a second thought, confident that it would serve as a positive capstone to end my otherwise underwhelming experience with the PlayStation 3. Unfortunately, “Puppeteer” comes with a unique set of flaws that, much like the unique flaws of the PlayStation 3 itself, culminate in a disappointing experience.
Presentation
“Puppeteer’s” visual design is meant to invoke a magical puppet theatre. Everything in the game is polygonal, but specifically designed with visible joints, gaps, gears, and other such mechanisms (though never actual puppet strings). Further, every object in the game is designed to look like it is crudely carved from wood, crafted from paper, or stitched together with bits of fabric. And while the game engine itself is 3D, the gamplay is 100% 2D, thus making “Puppeteer” one of the increasingly common 2.5D games that invokes traditional gamplay while employing modern visuals.
With “Puppeteer” being a 2.5D game that strives to look like it’s cobbled together with low-budget real-world components, it is no wonder the game is so strongly evocative of Media Molecule’s “LittleBigPlanet.” However, instead of presenting the player with a fully crafted world and allowing them to navigate it, as “LittleBigPlanet” does, “Puppeteer” constantly shifts the puppet theatre’s stage in an overly-busy and jarring manner, with props, backgrounds and characters flopping into view almost constantly. I found the constant movement to be extremely distracting.
The audio in “Puppeteer” is very similar to the visuals, in that the pleasantly catchy soundtrack and well-voiced narration are frequently drowned out by one of the annoying on-stage characters talking over them. The narration also shifts gears frequently, varying from a helpful chronicle of what is happening in the game’s plot to the narrator’s random, unsolicited ruminations on the glory of model trains and/or aircraft.
Story
“Puppeteer’s” greatest failing is its story. That is not to say that it is a bad story. In fact, quite the opposite is true. “Puppeteer” spins a whimsical fairy tale about a kingdom on the Moon that was once ruled by the Moon Goddess. However, at the outset of the game’s events, the Goddess has been deposed and has gone missing at the hands of the Moon Bear King. This giant bear has corrupted all of the other animals on the Moon and recruited them as generals in his bid to rule. With the power of the Dark Moonstone, the Moon Bear King has shattered the Light Moonstone and given fragments to each animal serving under him. In order to secure his position of power, the Moon Bear King has also begun kidnapping the souls of children from Earth, transforming them into purple, cyclopean minions called Grubs or just trapping them inside wooden puppets.
The Moon Witch, who works in the Moon Bear King’s kitchen, wants to seize power for herself, and sets up a plot with every puppet who finds its way into her culinary domain. Our hero, a puppet boy named Kutaro, is the first to actually succeed in the Moon Witch’s first task of stealing the Moon Goddess’s magical scissors, dubbed Calibres, from the Moon Bear King.
Kutaro is joined in his quest by a mopey Moon Cat sidekick, who is quickly (and unfortunately) replaced early on by an annoying Valley Girl pixy sidekick. As these characters make their way across the surface of the Moon in pursuit of the Light Moonstone shards, they uncover and thwart all of the Moon Bear King’s generals’ nefarious plans and encounter a menagerie of colorful characters along the way.
Now, in practice, this sounds like a great story for a platformer. And it is. However, the way it is presented in the game feels incredibly forced. Instead of tossing in a few bits and pieces of storytelling at the beginning and end of each stage, “Puppeteer” vomits story CONSTANTLY and incessantly as the play guides Kutaro through the game. It seems like some sort of cutscene happens every few seconds, and all of the characters (and narrator) babbling at the same time makes it difficult to focus on the action when they decide to spew narration and/or exposition without taking the time to do a cutscene.
This overarching problem of too much plot and too much narration all boils down to the game’s singular, self-destructive flaw: Pacing. “Puppeteer” simply has awful pacing. Each of the game’s 7 Acts features a mere 3 stages, each of which takes between 30 and 45 minutes to complete. While ultimately that boils down to a game that is between 10 and 15 hours long (which is fine for an Indie-styled 2D platformer), the fact that the individual chunks of the game are so long sucks a lot of the fun out of the platforming elements. Repeating stages is allowed, but having to sit through all of the plot and narration each time is grating. While there is an option to pause and skip narration, I found that doing so would frequently just take me to ANOTHER chunk of narration. And with the stages being as long and weirdly spliced-together as they are, going back into them in search of secrets and goodies feels far more tedious than fun.
Gameplay
“Puppeteer’s” gameplay makes it feel very much like a professional game development studio took the “LittleBigPlanet” level creation tools, customized them heavily, and produced a stand-alone game based on the engine. Of course, the main similarity to “LittleBigPlanet” is the sloppy nature of the jumping physics, which is at odds with the precision required at times by “Puppeteer.” Of course, “Puppeteer” differentiates itself from “LittleBigPlanet” in a lot of ways. Primarily, Kutaro’s stable of unlockable abilities adds plenty of unique flavor to the game.
The first type of ability introduced to the player is the Head Ability. At the beginning of the game, Kutaro loses the ‘real’ head for his puppet body, and so must make due with a variety of poor substitutes throughout the entire game. Getting hit causes Kutaro’s head to fall off and bounce around for 3 seconds before disappearing. Retrieving the head keeps Kutaro alive, while failing to do so causes him to either switch to one of his other heads (of which 3 can be carried at once) or die and spend a 1-up to restart the current scene (checkpoint) with all three reserve heads restored. Each head has a special power that can only be triggered in specific parts of specific stages (and since the stages are so long and heads are distributed semi-randomly, triggering all of these is a massive pain in the ass) to unlock something, such as a shortcut or a Bonus Stage, or just a quantity of Moonsparkles (essentially Coins, since gathering 100 provides an extra life).
Head Abilities, being as situational as they are, take a back seat to the 5 special abilities Kutaro earns by recovering artifacts scattered throughout the game. None of these artifacts is hidden, as they are essential parts of progressing through the acts. The first is Calibres, the magical scissors. Calibres acts as both a melee weapon for Kutaro and a mode of transportation, as it can cut into bits of background scenery to allow for a form of flight in specific areas. The Knight Head provides Kutaro with a shield that allows him to block up to three attacks (and sometimes reflect them back at the attacker) before taking a breather to recharge. The Ninja Head allows Kutaro to throw small bombs that blow up clearly-marked parts of the environment (and can kill enemies). The Pirate Head allows Kutaro to throw a grappling hook that, unfortunately, doesn’t allow him to swing around like Tarzan, but instead allows him to tug on hook-specific objects. Finally, the Luchador Head allows Kutaro to perform a diving headbutt to break, again, clearly-marked environmental objects/enemies.
Ultimately, navigating the stages and acts in “Puppeteer” would be quite fun, were it not for the constant intrusion of the plot’s overdeveloped sense of worth. Where “Puppeteer” falls down in the gameplay department is the boss fights. While each of them begins with something of a puzzle to figure out how exactly to use Kutaro’s capabilities to uncover a weakness, each of them ends with that bane of the modern era of gaming: QTEs. Every boss ultimately falls to an annoying Quick-Time Event where timed button presses instead of skilled platforming or clever use of abilities win the day.
Finally, it bears mentioning that “Puppeteer” features two-player asynchronous co-op. Player 1 controls Kutaro, while Player 2 controls his annoying, flying sidekick. It essentially falls to Player 2 to scour the stages for Moonsparkles and poke-able secrets in the background, which is really boring and not particularly helpful.
Overall
“Puppeteer” disappointed me with its terrible pacing and sensory overload. Had the cutscenes been better separated from the stages, and had the stages been snipped down into smaller, more replayable chunks, “Puppeteer” could have been a fantastic little platformer. As it is, though, I found myself slogging through the overly-long stages once and never desiring to repeat them again. Certain MeltedJoystick readers love to give me grief for giving platformers a pass in the story department, while still demanding a solid narrative from other action-based genres. Thanks to “Puppeteer,” I now have an example to point at when I declare that a platformer should rely on action to drive the player forward instead of an overbearing narrative.
Presentation: 4/5
Story: 2/5
Gameplay: 3.5/5
Overall (not an average): 3/5
