Ginger Roll Review (Android)

IRF Media has just taken their latest game out of its development stage, and has subsequently sent press kits to just about every Mobile gaming site there is. When it inevitably got around to RageFor, we decided to wait a few weeks for the inevitable rounds of updates and DLC that every game seems to need these days. New features were added to the game, so it felt like the time was right to finish the game proper.

Story

You play as a soulless mannequin the size of a toddler named Saif, riding a demonic skull hovercraft in an attempt to stop another weird-looking kid with an equally demonic sounding name, Iblis. When Saif attempts to thwart Iblis's evil plans for evil things n' stuff, Iblis uses his plot convenience Pokeball to transport Saif into a parallel universe that happens to be remarkably easy for a developer to code for. Our protagonist must now overcome a series of Sonic The Hedgehog bonus levels in order to make his way back to the real world, where Iblis could easily shoot his weird looking ass back to the series of bonus stages if he wanted to.

We learn in the opening credits that Saif is basically a super hero, and that Iblis is obviously Dr. Insano or something. A part of me wants a sequel to this game, just so we can see what life is like for Saif outside of the winding road of arcade tokens n' stuff. Maybe we'll actually get to ride the vampire-head in an open-world environment, after some triple-A development studio inevitably buys IRF Media and ruins everything about the franchise.

Gameplay

This game calls itself a platformer, but it is a platforming title in the looses sense of the word. The entire game is like balancing a glass marble on a wooden 2x4. The game is a winding road of obstacles that you navigate with your mobile device's accelerometer. The camera stays glued to the back of the protagonist like God himself glued an antenna to the back of saif's head and put a GoPro camera on the other end of it.

How good or bad the gameplay is depends heavily on whether or not your accelerometer is complete garbage. Recently, the developers added support for an on-screen joystick, which is a much better option for people who are gaming on what I call a "black friday" tablet, where everything from the accelerometer to the touch screen sucks, but it still runs games okay. Both options for navigating the environment are pretty good, but a part of me wants HID-compliant gamepad support.

The game fools you into thinking its going to be a boring UNITY clone of Marble Rush at first, but progressively gets more interesting as you get through the remarkably short levels. I think the game is way too easy at first, but only the last few levels of a stage really start to get at that level of difficulty that justifies easing you into it.

Graphics

This game looks like something straight outta the development kit of a Sega Dreamcast in 1999. It's like playing an old Macintosh game from the early 2000's, where everything looks like a slightly beefed up version of a title on the Nintendo 64.

The Nostalgic look worked for me, until I saw Saif's soulless ginger face. Holy crap this kid looks like the love child of Jason Voorhees and an alien from the X-files. Staring into Saif's dark, soul-stealing eyes is the stuff of nightmares. There needs to be creepy pastas about tiny orange-haired kids who never blink, and just stare through you into the vast void of nothingness, the way this character looks at things. This kid is the stuff of nightmares. seriously.

Sound

The Music made me want to swan dive off of Mufasa's death scene from The Lion King during a stampede. That uneven loop of music that plays throughout the entire game is possibly the most annoying thing I have ever heard in my life. There are no words to describe the sheer concentration-breaking ear molestation this game's music gives you. There is a 'lite' version of Ginger Roll, which is also the beta version of the game you could get for free. That has much better title music than the finished product, in my opinion.

It seems like there are a lot of sounds that are missing from the final product, like foot steps, wall-collision, and any sound that corresponds to the speed you're traveling. The lack of interactive sound, above all, makes this title seem unfinished, and nothing makes a game feel incomplete like the lack of audio.

Verdict

This is a deceptively good game, wrapped in dated graphics and a soundtrack that I'm convinced is trying to drive me insane. as good as the concept is, it feels like the game is still in beta right now.

The Good: Good gameplay, nice controls, lot of elements that prevent it from getting stale...

The bad: Mediocre graphics, missing sound, Satan's music...

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