BADLAND: Game of the Year Edition Review

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BADLAND Game of the Year Edition Review Screenshot 1

Are you ready for a fun and challenging puzzle game? If you are then I may have the game for you. BADLAND: Game of the Year Edition is a game bought to us by developer Frogmind. It’s a side-scrolling action adventure with physics-based gameplay and atmospheric graphics and audio. You will find yourself immersed in a deep and dark Forrest, full of traps and puzzles. You will control what looks like a hedgehog, who comes under the name of Cloney. This was a mobile game that has now been converted to consoles and PC. I have to say that the port is great and you would never know it was originally a mobile game.

As you begin to play Badland, you will notice how gorgeous the graphics are. Badland has a similar look to the game Limbo, but with a little bit more colour. The colours are vibrant and very sexy to look at. The graphics are all 2D and pretty simple really but for some reason they stand out.

The sound effects in this game are pretty decent with nothing too fancy. You have a nice eerie background sound track with some nice sound effects as you bounce around the level and collect the pickups. With the lovely graphics and sound Badland really entices you to play.

BADLAND Game of the Year Edition Review Screenshot 2

There is no tutorial in this game, but you soon realise you don’t really need one as the game play mechanics are self-explanatory. As you begin your adventure you will find the controls to be remarkably simple to use and get the hang of. You use the analogue stick to control Cloney and simply press the ‘A’ button to jump and fly around. The whole idea is you need to try to reach the end of each level with as many Clones as you can. Each level in this mysterious forest is filled with puzzles and challenges that you must work out to progress. As you move to the right following the level you will find you can’t turn back. The screen moves to the right and follows you, so you must stay ahead of the screen moving. If you are too slow then you will kill your Cloney. Don’t worry too much though as the game makes good use of checkpoints. As you progress through the level and work out each puzzle it makes a checkpoint. So when you do die you are not put miles back, but you are placed where you left of. This is a welcome feature as the levels get harder and harder as you progress.

The game has a lot of levels. With over 15 hours and 100 levels of single-player story. This may not seem enough, but as I have said the levels can be pretty hard to work out and you will spend a good few hours playing this game and trying to complete it. As you fly around the levels there are certain pickups along the way, which you need to use strategically to win. You have a sticky pickup that makes you stick as you jump, Slowing you down a lot. You have a roll pickup that cause your clone to roll around. You have pickups that make you bigger, where the more you collect the bigger your clone gets. There is a pickup that makes you smaller and smaller, and finally there is a pickup that duplicates your clone and created more and more clones to fly through the level. At the end of each level you get awarded for the more clones that you have successfully navigated through the level. The game is pretty hard to explain fully here. You will need to play it for yourself to see.

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There is a multiplayer aspect to Badland. However it is local play only. The GOTY edition also offers loads of local multiplayer fun: up to four players can compete against each other on 27 different deathmatch stages or work together to survive through all 100 levels of the co-op campaign. As I have just mentioned though it not online multiplayer. This is a shame as it meant I could not enjoy this feature and I could not test this for the review.

So to round things of, BADLAND: Game of the Year Edition is quite simply a breath-taking game. It was a huge surprise to me as I came into it with low expectations. It’s one of the easiest games ever to pick up and play and has some great fun gameplay if you enjoy puzzle games. It will give you a good few hours of enjoyment and you won’t regret picking this one up. I really can’t do it justice in this review. It is one of the best pickup and play games I have played in ages.

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

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