Don’t get me wrong, it has its problems, but the good far outweighs the bad.
If someone asked me what was the best game in the series to start with, I’d tell them Runner. It’s the most solid game in the entire series, and unlike Beat or Core or any of the other Bit.Trip games, it’s a lot more friendly to beginners. With all of that, it’s no wonder that Runner ended up being the most popular entry in the series, spawning two more sequels. The gameplay is fun and addicting, and there’s actually a decent amount of ‘rhythm’ this time! But most importantly, Runner doesn’t forget the roots of its genre. It’ll take you around a dozen hours to complete for the first time, and if you’re going for all the achievements it’ll probably take you at least three times that amount. Each of the three worlds stands out in their own ways and present their own obstacles for you to avoid. As with pretty much every game in the series, the music is outstanding, the visuals are pure eye candy, and the aesthetics as a whole are masterfully done. Nevertheless, the game’s better aspects pushed me onward. As well as that, the game fails to explain certain important mechanics to you, such as how you can hold the jump button to float in the air to make longer jumps, and how pressing the spring button on different parts of a spring will affect the arc of your leap. On the challenges where jumping needed to be super accurate, I found how Commander Video jumped was quite inconsistent, which was annoying to say the least. It very nearly put me off my quest to fully complete the game, as did the game’s wonky jumping physics. Every time I failed on a challenge, I had to exit back to the menu, go on to level select, select the level I was just on and wait for it to load. Now I’m not saying the game should allow you to reset the challenge itself, but it should at least allow you to reset the level. The game does have a rest button… for the main level. “But George, the game does have a reset button.” I hear you say. The worst part for me during the forty or so hours I spent completing the game 100%, was the lack of a restart button. It’s the only Bit.Trip game I found to be forgiving enough that I could actually 100% it.ĭespite this, the difficulty is still extremely brutal, with some design choices only further exemplifying the game’s harshness. Instead of having to replay fifteen minutes of patterns every time you make a mistake, you only need to replay about half a minute at most. Because of this, Runner is a lot easier than any other game in the series, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Levels aren’t any longer than one or two minutes with the bonus challenge only taking another minute to complete. Runner still has this problem, but it’s far less infuriating.
Most of the game length was caused by the long dragged-out levels and the amount of times you’d have to restart them all the way from the beginning again. This is a huge difference compared to all the previous games, which only had three levels each. There are three worlds, each with twelve levels and eleven bonus challenges(boss doesn’t have one) for you to beat. If you collect all the gold on the level, you can play a super hard 8-bit bonus challenge that increases your score even further.
Your goal is simply to get to the end of the level without hitting an obstacle and collecting as much gold as possible. The game introduces you to each action slowly, giving you ample time to adjust and get the hang of it before you move onto the next one. A button makes him jump, down on the D-Pad makes him slide under obstructions, right makes him kick destroying unavoidable objects and so on. You press various buttons to make him avoid any obstacles in his path.
Commander Video, the main character of the series, runs to the right. Like the rest of the Bit.Trip series, Runner is easy to learn, but soul-crushingly hard to master. Yet it doesn’t lack in similarities to its predecessors and successors. It’s the one I find the most memorable as well as the most fun to play. Bit.Trip Runner is my favourite game in the series for a multitude of reasons. All of them, except the game I’ll be reviewing today that is. And all of them cater to a very specific audience with very little regard for newcomers. They suffer from some of the same problems as well as their own unique design flaws. Each of the games has their own pros and cons, with some being better than others.
The Bit.Trip series is a mixed bag to say the least. Game Name: Bit.Trip Runner Platforms: Wii, Nintendo 3DS, Windows, Mac, Linux Developer: Gaijin Games Publishers: Gaijin Games, Aksys Games Price: £6.99 or $9.99