Game: Rotastic

Platform: XBLA

Publisher: Focus Home

Developer: Dancing Dots

ESRB: N/A

Genre: Spinning Viking Platformer

Players: 1-4

What's Hot: Casual gameplay works great for the first half of the levels

What's Not: Mid game difficulty soars

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Review by: Neilie Johnson

Rotastic is a casual XBLA game from Focus Home Interactive but to me it sounds more like a new marketing initiative from KFC. “Try our new rotisserie chicken – it's rotastic!” Regardless of my associational hangups, Rotastic is indeed a game—and a surprisingly entertaining one at that. Unfortunately, it's really only half an entertaining game due to control issues and a collection of diabolically difficult levels that make beating the game virtually impossible.

Brought to us by French development company Dancing Dots, (the folks who brought us the “My Baby” series...shudder) Rotastic starts with a vaguely medieval theme and its core concept is simple: hold the A button to grapple various anchor points, whirl madly around them, then let go. Well OK, it's not that simple. The point of all this grappling and whirling is to move among the anchor points collecting gems and further, to collect said gems without dying or letting the timer run out.

If gem collection was all Rotastic was about, it would get old quickly. Fortunately, there's more to it than that and during the game's first chapters you're shown how to collect gems let's say...artfully. Style points are gained by choreographing your motions to create shapes like circles, squiggles and figure eights as you swing from point to point. It's worth it to perfect these techniques not only because it adds interest to the gameplay and because it feels cool gliding around the level; it's also rewarding since the more stylish your execution, the higher your scores. You can also boost your scores by collecting gems in order of color, by clearing the screen faster and by avoiding death. At the end of each level, you're given a bronze, silver or gold helmet, depending on how many points you scored and this is also important because later levels require a set number of helmets in order to be unlocked.

All this sounds easy and at first, it is. Then around about the middle of the game, things get as difficult as one of the kids from that “My Super Sweet 16” TV show. You know, the one with the spoiled teenagers you wanna punch in the face? Rotastic starts out harmless enough but when level layouts become more complex and become littered with spiked boards of death, narrow (and timed) windows of escape and erratically moving piranha-faced dragons, things get ugly. And it's not just that things become more challenging—it's that at that point you realize you're not completely in control. Split-second timing is key both for getting past advanced hazards and for saving yourself from impromptu deaths but at that level of difficulty, the controls feel somewhat unresponsive. I can't tell you how many times I sat madly pressing the A button, only to have my little Viking character ignore the nearest anchor point and plummet to a spiky death.

This control problem is Rotastic's only issue but unfortunately, it's not something that's easily ignored. Wait, no—there's one more. The game features an incongruous quartet of playable characters: a Viking, an Elf, a Boar and Death itself and these come in a variety of unlockable colors. The thing is, it doesn't seem to matter which of them you play; the differences appear to be purely cosmetic. This feels like a missed opportunity because if Dancing Dot could take the time to create different characters and write backstories for each of them, couldn't they give them different playable characteristics, thus making them more fun to play?

All told, Rotastic has nearly 70 stages containing various objectives and most gamers will probably be able to play more than half of them. Thankfully, the first chapters are fun, offer some good gameplay variety and exhibit a fair amount of good-humored silliness (as in the level called “Chickenasteroids”). Better yet, since the game's utter lack of story renders progression unimportant, you can have considerable fun replaying these first chapters and trying to earn better scores. The game has no online multiplayer (although it does have Leaderboards) but it does have a reasonably fun 4-player local multiplayer mode wherein you and up to three friends try to collect the most gems or in a round of Rotastic Deathmatch, rack up the most kills by cutting your opponents' ropes.

Rotastic is a good game that through a couple of poor choices limited its own potential. Its premise is simple but engaging and developer Dancing Dots builds effectively upon that premise throughout the first half of the game. Unfortunately, past that point, unforgiving level design combined with unwieldy controls make for a gaming experience that's ultimately So-So-tastic.

Neilie Johnson is a regular contributor to GameShark , as well as Atomicgamer.com and IGN and is an associate editor of the new GameFan Magazine.

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