Planet Alpha

The Good
Sidescrollers are expected to be beautiful and Planet Alpha certainly lives up to this ideal, with a huge varied world animated behind your character as you make your way across dangerous terrain.

The thrill of running for the sake of running is not lost here, and Planet Alpha is at its best when you run and jump and slide through the alien world.

The Bad
Between gorgeous running sections are puzzle or stealth sections that drag the pacing right down, and become more obtuse as the game goes on. The puzzles simply involved moving a block some place to help you escape, and the stealth sections were more just exercises in timing and patience. Given the thrill involved in running through the world, I didn't want to do either! Even the one clever aspect of the puzzles soon became turgid: You learn how to speed up the planet's rotation, some of the flora and fauna of the planet react differently based on the amount of light they receive. However rotating the planet takes ages, so this can be especially frustrating when first trying to figure things out with trial and error.

The problem with a game involving so little action, except running left to right, is that the game soon just becomes a bit of a screen saver. Everything of interest happens in the background as you run along. Very little actually happens to you. Then there were the sections of dim or completely dark environments making it very difficult to see where to go next.

While traversing the environment is a joy, it becomes less so if you have ton repeat sections, due to some surprise element happening. Maybe you missed your jump, or a robot got a lucky shot. Either way it chips away at the goodwill engendered by the one gameplay loop that works well.

While I liked aspects of the music, I wanted to hear more. However the dynamic music system was a little too dynamic meaning tracks were cut off and replaced with others, rather than fading or blending from one to another.

The Bottom Line
Just keep running right, it's the best aspect of this game. Everything of interest or beauty happens in the background. The forces stealth and puzzle sections will annoy, particularly later in the game when save points become fewer.