Game:

The Next Penelope (2015)

Duration: 21:13

703 views

18

Fun. Stylish. Vibrant. Inventive. Throwback. These are a few words to describe Aurelien Regard and Plug In Digital's "The Next Penelope: Race to Odysseus", a futuristic top-down combat racer that takes a few pages from classics like "Micro Machines", "WipEout" and "F-Zero" and incorporates a minor evolution system, a diverse set of weapons, a spin on some Greek mythology (Homer's Odyssey), and boss battles to create a fresh indie experience. Ithaca, year 3044. Odysseus has been away at sea for over a decade, and his kingdom is now under attack by Poseidon, father of the Cyclopes race, for bringing down one of his sons (likely Polyphemus). Now it's up to Odysseus' wife Penelope to find him before he tries to annihilate the galaxy. On top of his long absence, Penelope has to battle thieves, evil extraterrestrial beings, unwanted suitors (ten years is a long time to be beautiful and without a significant other in your life, lol) and the learning curve of her well-armed craft. It's always nice to have a game with underlying tones and depth that you can research at your leisure... makes ya come out feelin' a little smarter.

At least, that's as far as the story is concerned, but this game is not without a few glaring issues. The game is indeed fun on its own merits with cool weapons that allow you to hook objects, plant mines that heal and damage, and even slow time to teleport, but it's a little light on content for the $13 price tag and, more importantly, has a very formulaic mission structure that could've actually benefited from some additional padding. Each main level basically consists of an easy tutorial level, a race level against thieves/suitors, and a boss. Stages are often very short and in a game with this much potential, its brevity is actually somewhat disappointing without a level editor or even DLC to expand the content. This is further upsetting because a clear effort was made to make each sector of the game interesting with varied boss battles and gimmicks (most bosses encourage you to spam a weapon you just got to win), and a risk-versus-reward system as every weapon costs energy to use that keeps you in the race. A Grand Prix or some kind of progressive ranking system would've also kept things interesting, but it at least has local multiplayer.

Another issue is the experience system. Players earn a paltry sum of experience for clearing a stage and an almost as paltry sum for grabbing gems farmed from combating opponents. Outside of boss battles (which offer a sizable amount), there's not much of a rational way to get it, and since experience is used to upgrade your core abilities, this was initially a problem. I say "initially" because when the game was in Early Access, you had to clear successive levels to keep your experience, but now you can play any level you've cleared at your leisure. Ironically, this created the issue of farming a massive amount in literally minutes by spamming the Orbital Ruins boss with Vampire Mines, who rewards 150XP and can be beaten in 10-20 seconds. The game is fairly challenging without ship upgrades, but I don't think it was intended to be so easy to get all your upgrades. While minor, I had to turn off the game's Cloud Synchronization as well, since, it wouldn't keep my saves once I quit, though reading up on the game, this seems like an isolated issue.

Either way, with a little more fine-tuning, this game could've gone down as an indie must-have for any combat racing enthusiasts, but I'd still recommend it on sale. It is stylish. It is vibrant. It is somewhat inventive. It's certainly a throwback (you even get a "Mode 7" achievement, lol). Being developed with Construct 2, it has potential for further growth. And, for what it is worth, it is fun while it lasts... you can clear everything in about two or three hours, and less if you're running to clear it as quickly as possible (this requires a good deal of skill on the player's part, partly because you accelerate automatically). This is a video showing some of the game in action. You can get it at:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/332250/The_Next_Penelope/

Enjoy.

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