Funk of Titans is dev A Crowd of Monsters second game (The first being a phone game called Sugar Kid; the third being the awesome-looking Blues and Bullets, released on Steam two days prior), and a decent platformer to boot. Notable, since it’s a genre that got burned out in the 90’s and very few worthy of note get released nowadays, though probably more than I know about.
The story goes like this; In funky old Greece, BAMF Zeus realized that a hero was necessary to beat back the hordes of the musical titans of Pop, Rap and Rock. He quickly made one (complete with pelvic thrusts in the trailer; that’s when I was hooked on this game’s stank), and sent his new son, Perseus, to step all over Olympus’ enemies. Those enemies including Lady Gaga Madonna Snakey McMachinegunboobs. It sort of falls apart a little bit when you consider that Rock and Pop predate Funk as musical genres in general, but looking at the characters, you can see that they’re supposed to represent the modern versions of those genres.
Graphically, the game looks okay. The models are far from perfect, however. The best have some degree of style applied to them (Perseus, Hercules). Everyone but Perseus seems to have an odd division between where their face meets the side of their head, though. To my recollection, Aretha (yes, really) gets hit with this pretty hard. The models aren’t the most important thing in the game, though. My computer isn’t even a year old, but for some reason it had trouble playing the game at full resolution. Things were choppy and laggy to an unplayable degree. I’m not sure why this was, as it could very well be that my graphics card just doesn’t play nice with the game. But seeing as dropping the resolution to 1024×768 made the game playable, I’m unsure. This did, however, make assessment difficult.
Gameplay is simple; it’s an autorunner. I don’t generally like them, but I gave this one some leeway as its funkyness did make an impression. I don’t know if it was always meant to be an autorunner, as there are areas that seem a bit odd for such a thing to say the least. But that is how it is now. There are, however, parts where you’ll wish it wasn’t. Certain jumps are difficult to make when you’re not in direct control of your forward momentum, especially those that lead directly into wall jumps. It’s also not helpful that controls for your jumps and attacks are just the slightest bit loose. But overall, the game is fun, and the controls are good enough that you won’t have any problem beating the game. One hundred percenting the game, on the other hand, will likely cause you a little bit of hair pulling.
While most of the game is autorunning platforming, there are a few things to change it up. The bonus game allows you to collect bonus golden vinyls on the back of the pegasus (think child’s hobby horse with rockets attached). The controls are similar to Donkey Kong Country Returns’ rocket barrel stages; hold a button to angle up, let go to angle down. The levels you fly through are selected at random from a small rotation, as you’ll eventually see one you played before again. There are also mid-boss battles and boss battles. Both wind up being something like a quicktime event. You need to hit the arrow keys as they show up to beat your opponent for three rounds. Fairly standard stuff.
Aesthetically, the colors are bright. Very bright. There is a level in world 1 which is overwhelmingly yellow. So much so, that most of Perseus and every piece of vinyl (both of which are yellow) become impossible to discern against the background of an incredibly bright sunset. It’s the sort of thing that might have been ameliorated by cell shading, along with the aforementioned model issues. Other than that, though, everything looks good.
Lastly, the soundtrack is appropriately funky. I haven’t exactly counted all of the tracks on tap, but I know that most rotate through the levels. It’s something that’s especially noticeable when you have to restart a level for some reason. Sound effects are fine as well. They don’t stick out, so they’re doing their job right.
In closing, Funk of Titans is a good game. It’s not the sort of platformer I assumed it would be, but its charm certainly won me over. And while it isn’t a long game, you can certainly do worse on Steam.
B. Simmons
Title: Funk of Titans
Developer: A Crowd of Monsters
Publisher: Merge Games
Platform: PC (reviewed), Xbox One, Android
Price: $6.99, $12.49, an $4.99, respectively
Funk of Titans
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