Cliff Diving Review

Here we have yet another Augmented Reality game for your beloved PlayStation Vita. This time round it involves some humour-based cliff diving. This is another one of those bundled games that you get for free when you purchase your new toy. Will this one be any better than the other offerings?

Well, it’s not too bad at all, however, it’s not going to win any awards. These Augmented Reality games all seem to just be a way for Sony to show off, their new handheld. This seems to be the top priority of pretty much all the current releases nowadays, they seem to be churning out all these fancy looking games and concentrating on trying to use all of the available new touch and motion censored features of the PS Vita. Mind you, you pretty much know what to expect when you pick this game up.

It’s time to put your swim shorts on and leap from some cliffs. Cliff Diving was my favourite AR game of the bunch packed in with the Vita.  Graphically it looks nice and the idea of creating a virtual diving board against any background is quite appealing and enjoyable as you start to think of all those crazy places to place your AR cards. I even used my cat as he was asleep. I used to do some mini cliff diving way back when I was a nipper at school in the Scottish Highlands. It was great fun, so I have always enjoyed watching people on TV doing it, and indeed, I quite liked the sound of this game when I first heard about it.

You play the part of Diver Dan and you have to perform perfect stylish dives into a small pinpoint hole that’s gets smaller and smaller as you progress. After each dive you are marked and awarded a certain amount of points and cash; these go towards unlocking new platforms. There is also a feature that lets you design your own custom diving platforms by using your AR cards.

The controls are a bit awkward to explain, but as you begin each dive you use the back touchpad to pump up Diver Dan’s adrenaline before you start running and use the X button to perform your jump as you reach a marked jumping point. You need to hold it down though at this gives you a line marking the distance you want to leap. As you are in mid-air you have rings to go through, and again, you tap a button to perform your stylish moves. As the game progresses the difficulty level evolves by adding more rings and, as mentioned before, giving you smaller target dive spots to land in.

Despite these good points, however, after about thirty minutes of so you will most likely put your AR cards away, never to see the light of day again. Like all the AR games, which are nice to get for free, they are not the best. You certainly shouldn’t take this factor as a decision maker when purchasing your PlayStation Vita.

REVIEW CODE: A complimentary Playstation Vita code was provided to Bonus Stage for this review. Please send all review code enquiries to press@4gn.co.uk.