Puzzle
October 1985 (Nintendo)
I like puzzle games, so I know I’m going to be excited about all of the ones I won’t know that I’ll run across. I got to one pretty quick.
The basic idea is to run around a level that looks like a geoboard. There is a secret pattern of gold bars between the pegs that you uncover when you pass over them. You don’t really control your character once the game starts. Instead, you use the D pad to stick your arm out in a direction that lets you grab onto a peg so you can rotated around the peg to go in a different direction. If you run into a wall you turn around.
This wonky control system means that you can’t really grab a peg and go any direction you want. This frustrates me to know end. The sad part is that I was thinking about how I would have designed the game differently and I thought of the exact same scheme for controlling the guy. My wife says it might be better to have A stick out one arm and B stick out the other. We both wonder why you can’t just turn the guy like in Pac-Man.
All the while there are some enemies running around that try to kill you. Luckily you can turn them into an orange with the power of sonar and eat them. But only if you have a clear path to the edge of the board, otherwise you’ll just push them. Which means you can’t eat an enemy if you’re spinning around a peg.
This game is just frustrating. The 2nd level is ridiculous compared to the first. The timer runs out way too fast. It doesn’t even have the decency to wait until you start playing the game. Once your guy is on the screen it starts counting down. I’m sure there’s somebody out there who likes this game, but I’ve never seen them.
I completely disagree with you about all but one point. The game is hard to the point that it will make grown people cry.
I would say play it more and it’ll grow on you but I’m not sure it’s an acquired taste; rather, I feel it’s one of those ‘like it or don’t’ games.
I personally didn’t find Clu Clu Land that horrible. I’ve been used to the game’s old and peculiar controls, only pain are those Uniras and some randomly placed hidden obstacles. If there’s one person who still enjoys this title, let it be me.
I know for a fact that there are two people because my wife likes it too. But she’s a puzzle game freak and likes all kinds of games in the genre.