POSTED 25/9/11


ROTASTIC

Focus Home Interactive
Xbox 360/XBLA (also on PS3/PSN, PC)

What goes up must come down. Well, unless it grabs hold of a space-floaty spindle thingy and just spins in a way we’re confident Kylie Minogue would approve of.

Yes, spinning around is the key to Rotastic, a puzzler game which requires you to sit and rotate. Hmmmmm... You choose one of four disparate characters – beardie Viking, dandy elf, sausage-wielding boar or Death Himself (their capitalisation) - and get hurled into various cartoony arenas, going all Bionic Commando (except with rope rather than roboarm, so hello shit comparison) with those aforementioned spindle thingies, doing the spin spin sugar until you believe it’s time to release, hopefully sending you somewhere useful rather than to perilous doomified deathness.

Somewhere useful is usually variously coloured jewels that could have been yoinked from Popcap when they were distractedly zombie discoing. Get all Pokëmon (that’s a cuddly, rotund yellow metalhead) and collect ’em all then escape via a blue door (green was on backorder) to the next of 68 challenges. Achieve goodishly and score pointy helmets ranging from bronze to gold... and later diamond. Good lord!

Progression brings complication – hardly a revelation, as that describes essentially every game ever. Rather than simply nabbing jewels whilst making pretty air patterns, you’ll encounter big bitey things, walls that sure ain’t fuzzy, nasty cannons and more – although there’s good stuff too, like bouncy surfaces and exploding birds (possibly holidaying away from the island of iOS).

Some stages even get Arkanoidy, whilst others have you trying to survive potential painfulness awhile or competing for jewel-nabbing supremacy. Oh yeah, there’s no online other than world rankings. Still, up to four can scuffle locally.

Rotastic starts fungasmically enough, but joy decreases as pinpoint accuracy necessity increases, for the mechanism doesn’t allow for needed super-accurate dead-eyedness. Colour Kyles bummed...

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