Big Hops Together

This game has (had?) good potential, but it misses the mark in several areas. These issues are not so high-friction as to prevent me from finishing the game, but when credits rolled I kind of had a bad taste in my mouth. Like my time would have been better spent playing something else, but your milage may vary depending on how much you like 3D platformers. I'm pretty conflicted in not recommending this game, since it's clear on display that lots of passion and effort went into it but at the end of the day my enjoyment dictates my review. ~~~ What I enjoyed ~~~ [list] [*]The art design is pretty charming. There is a strong cohesion and style that is present throughout. All the animals are fun to look at and while there aren't really any huge risks taken, it still conveys what it wants to. [*]The move set that hop has is well rounded enough that I never felt like I didn't have the tools to do what I needed to. It promises the ability to express yourself in traversal through the use of various jumps, slides, wall runs, and dives in addition to a plethora of fun fruits which all have a different use when thrown. [/list] ~~~ What I disliked ~~~ [list] [*]The game is buggy. I didn't experience any crashes to desktop, but the movement is not polished enough for a game centered around it. Clips, dropped inputs, funky collision. It's enough to become noticeable after a few hours and really wheigh on you by the end. [/list] The writing... infuriated me. There is so much about the writing that completely got on my nerves. It seems completely unaware of sentiment, drive, or morals. It deserves its own points. [list] [*]The antagonist/secondary-protagonist is eminently dislikeable. Like, the guy is straight up a four-letter-word. Now, I love a villain that's fun to hate, but there's nothing fun about this guy. Most egregiously, you can't get away from him. He's ALWAYS around being annoying in the worst way, like Navi except she calls you names and shoves you in a locker. If he was just the conflict, then sure that's one thing, but he's the entire driving force for the plot It's like playing a game with your worst high school bully being reason you're there in the first place and he keeps popping up to kick you in the balls. Then, if that weren't bad enough, the game tries to make him redeemable! Like, there is nothing that this guy does that isn't manipulative, rude, or arrogant. But at the end of the story.... noooo he's a sympathetic guy... pwease forgive him. It would be worth it if the climax was Hop dropping him into a volcano or something, but we don't even get that satisfaction. [*] The protagonist, Hop, has no agency. He is abducted, manipulated, bullied, and cajoled the entire game. He takes no independent action that ever has an effect on the plot, he is only ever told what to do. The closest he comes is with a vague overarching goal of rebuilding an airship, but [spoiler] any payoff is immediately undermined by the antagonist (or just bad luck? I forget) who blows it up the first chance he gets. (after about 2 minutes of cutscene) [/spoiler] I don't know if I can properly convey how unsatisfying this is. You spend the entire game working towards this goal, and [spoiler] it gets ripped from you the moment you achieve it with no consequences. [/spoiler] The only reason he can work towards his goal of the airship parts is because it aligns with what the antagonist is bullying Hop into doing. [*]There's an entire level in the game that is dedicated to helping out an Oil Baron. I thought this was a joke at first, but no, the level plays out pretty straight with the Oil Baron being the good guy, and the Eco-Terrorist being the bad guy. How these two characters are portrayed is hilarious with the Baron being this meek little guy who's polite and kind of timid, and the Eco-Terrorist being this brash angry guy who is dedicated to blowing the oil rigs up. It's a plot point in the level that clean energy exists! But you're still going to this guy's oil rigs and fixing them up, and defending them from the terrorist. It's the Baron that revitalized the impoverished town! He creates jobs and happiness! It shouldn't matter that he dumps oil into the ocean. He's a Good Guy. The game lampshades this a bit with some dialogue from NPCs (eg. "Thank goodness this oil is spraying into the ocean instead of onto our nice shiny oil rig. What a disaster!"), which led me to believe this was initially going to be where Hop ends up taking the side of the Terrorist to stop the Baron, but no, beyond some background dialogue, it's played straight till the end. It honestly feels like pro-oil propaganda lmao. [/list] ~~~ Self-aware nitpicks ~~~ [list] [*]It seems like the game is very close to being fully voice acted, but is missing like the last 20% of dialogue. You'll be in a cutscene and everything will have great voice acting, but then everyone will go silent for 1-2 lines before returning to full voice acting. I imaging that these lines were added after the acting was done, but it still caught me off guard every time. [*] Dark Bits/Drips look too similar to each other and are pretty boring. For being the main collectable in the game I would have hoped that they'd be a little more interesting than a vague blob of purple. And even standing right next to one, you basically can't tell them apart, which is pretty annoying since they have wildly different values. [/list]

Good then bad then good then bad. Fun but extremely inconsistent platforming. I hit a point where I didn't want to struggle with it anymore.

While I love the gameplay - specifically the movement - and the graphic design, I cannot recommend this game. The expectations game seems to set are so inconsistent between different parts of the same area it is frustrating. The thing that got me to actually rage quit the game is when I skipped some parts of the main story by wandering off and finding level's exit TWICE IN AN HOUR. Like I get it that you might not want the game to block skipping its parts like that, but I would love at the very least some warning while playing first, casual playthrough. The fact that I wasn't able to go back and I didn't want to progress was so frustrating. I was mad during the first time, but when it happened again in that short while I couldn't care to continue.

Great platformer, mediocre collectathon. Really nice game. You can feel how much heart and soul went into the design. Great characters, amazing worlds and a really fun momentum based movement system which builds on Mario 64's dive attack with its belly slide. Also the different fruits feel pretty enganging to explore and push you to find creative ways to progress. Solid 18 hours of fun but the endgame is pretty exhausting. It needs more docking ports for your airship and an easier way to boot out of the levels once you find the desired object. To collect everything you have to do a lot of backtracking. A LOT. It's fun at first because you got different fruits compared to your first run, but it gets exhausting real quick. Also the rewards weren't that... rewarding 😅 no new and cool items like for example a jetpack or something crazy. You just get the normal drips or some basic stuff. I collected all the bugs and was pretty disappointed. So the gane lost me at this point. Till then I had great fun.

A lot of love went into this game and it clearly shows in the variety of mechanics that were attempted and implemented. You can see inspiration from mario64, spyro, crash bandicoot, sly cooper, and even newer games like celeste towards the end. It's just a fun world to drop into and spend some time hopping around. Once you get the more physics based movement down, it feels really good sliding and rolling along through the levels so smoothly. Lots of cool items to pick up and hoard for just the right moment. My biggest gripes were: - The high jump mechanic is somewhat annoying how it doesn't propel you forward. You can get a little better at this if you do it quickly while maintaining some speed before using, but it never felt like what I wanted to happen. - Swimming is not very enjoyable, mainly from the short breath timer. Luckily you can unlock a motorized swimming device if you explore a little bit shortly after unlocking the ability to swim. I used that thing anytime I touched the water. There's also not that much swimming overall Other than those couple of things I enjoyed this one and would definitely recommend to anyone who likes platformers.

Excellent game, if you grew up with sly/crash/jak it has that same soul; which IMO is what the gaming world needed. 100 percented the game and multiplayer was just announced!

The first 2/3rds of the game are really good. The final few hours are significantly less good, but they still have their moments. The mines aren't exactly bad, just not on par with the first few areas. It feels like they ran out of money or something. But overall this is a great little game with a bunch of interesting mechanics going on. Swinging around and climbing on stuff was a lot of fun. If you like 3D platformers you should definitely check it out

This is unironically one of the greatest platformers every made.

Absolutely genius game design and level design, with immersive systems that reward experimentation and cheesing. Nothing ever gets stale - you frequently get a new mechanic to play with right up until the very end.