Xbox

Scaler

Truth be told, there's never been a shortage of platform games on the market, and the majority of them have been pretty average at best. Now Global Star and Artificial Mind and Movement are trying to push their way into a crowded market with the release of Scaler. Surprisingly enough, however, this budget-minded game may just have what it takes to carve out a nice little niche for itself.

Ever since Mario 64 hit the Nintendo 64, we have seen platform games out the you-know-what. There have been some that succeeded and some that just downright sucked. The market has become saturated with platforms, and it is really hard to separate the diamonds from the turds. Now we have Scaler for the Xbox, Playstation 2 and Nintendo GameCube systems. And I must admit that this game is actually very good. I am not sure if Scaler will be able to give platform greats Mario and Sonic a run for their money, but he still manages to stand on his own. Not only is it pretty good but the game also clocks in at $20 brand spanking new. That’s the kind of games that I like, good platform games at a good price. So how does Scaler play? Is it worth the twenty clams? Read on my friends.

The platform genre has seen its share of rough times. Between innovating titles such as Mario 64 and the umpteen clones that followed, gamers saw the rise and fall of several three dimensional worlds and the heroes inhabiting them.

For the past few weeks, there has been tons of new games that have been unleashed upon the gaming world. It seems like the majority of these games have been platforming games. Even though this seems to be the case, the latest game by Global Star Software, is a solid entry into the fold, and even gets more points for being a budget friendly title. Read on to find out more about this quirky platforming game.

That’s what we like – a game with a nice short and to-the-point name. Okay it may sound like some kind of bathroom cleaning fluid, but it sure beats ‘Lizard Boy: The Reptile Conspiracy’, which this game could all-too-easily have been called. Although as far as descriptive names go, something along the lines of Weird Psychedelic Platform Adventure would also fit the bill. Not quite as catchy though.

Scaler just isn't an especially engaging platformer, so it's unlikely that anyone past the youngest of audiences will get too much fun from it. Whether you've noticed it or not, there has been a bit of a surge recently in the quantity of kid-friendly platformers hitting store shelves. Games like Crash Twinsanity, Ty the Tasmanian Tiger 2, and Tak 2 have all come out within a fairly short span of time, and though none of these games have been anything spectacular, none of them have been especially bad either.

Sorte de mélange entre Gex pour le côté lézard du héros capable de grimper à la verticale sur certaines plantes et Spyro pour l'ambiance générale très colorée, Scaler est un petit jeu de plates-formes bien sympathique. Certes, on est loin des références du genre comme Rayman 3, mais le jeu d'A2M est disponible à petit prix, alors on lui pardonne aisément le fait qu'il soit un peu court et que l'on doive souvent recadrer manuellement la caméra. Si vous aimez le genre vous pouvez investir : à moins de 20 Euros, c'est un titre qui ne vous décevra pas.

By the end of the game I started to wonder who this title was targeted at. Adults will hate the characters so much they'll probably never get past the second world, whereas the children will be turned off by the games dark look and steep challenge (especially towards the end). Even for a budget price, it seems like Scaler is going to be a tough sell. He's certainly not the worst mascot character I've ever seen, but if this is where developers have been forced to go, then I fear for the future of this genre.

I have played some strange games in my life. For example, I played Infacide, an Apple II GS game with premise of Frogger, only with babies instead of frogs. I have played the Southpark shooter, a game were the alt fire mode for the snowball involves yellow snow. Scaler, while not on the scale of Infacide or Southpark, is an intrinsically strange game.