Apparently, Badland is a popular mobile game, so much so that now it has a Game of the Year edition playable on most consoles and Steam (reviewed on PS3 here).  In the game, you control a flying bat creature as you help it flap up and down to avoid obstacles in a strange and shadowy swampy and mechanical backdrop.  But is it really worthy of a ‘Game of the Year’ edition?  Read on to find out!

In the game, you’ll travel through short, left-to-right auto-sidescrolling levels.  Make it to the end pipe to get sucked in and finish the level.  But watch out for obstacles like sawblades and boulders that can dice and crush you!  Luckily you get unlimited tries, and the game usually starts you back near where you left off.  But it’s still pretty challenging.  Luckily the play control is simple.  Just hold down the button to flap and fly, and release to fall back down.  It kind of reminds me of the controls in classics like Joust or Balloon Fight.  Be on the lookout for hidden eggs, three in each level, as well.

In the levels are power-ups that you automatically pick up when you get near them, and they can help you bypass obstacles.  They look like berries or Power Pellets.  There’s one that can make you grow big, handy for moving things out of your way.  Another one shrinks you, for when you need to fit into small spaces.  Others let you spin around and roll on surfaces fast.  And another splits you into clones of yourself, so when you need to charge through a gauntlet of obstacles or split up to reach two different objects, as long as one of you survives, you can still go on.  Keep an eye on these power-ups, as they can be hard to see sometimes with the shadowy foreground, and you’ll need them to keep you from scrolling off the screen into oblivion!

The Game of the Year Edition features all the unlockable extra levels and modes, but you’ll have to play through a good chunk of the single player missions to get them, which is no easy task. There are also co-op and multiplayer modes for up to four players.  You can work together to make sure everyone makes it to the end in co-op, or race to be the last one flapping in multiplayer.  But they just re-use most of the single player stages for these areas.  While I’m not sure this game really deserved a Game of the Year Edition, it is still a decent, albeit hard, little game regardless.

Kid Factor:

Badland: Game of the Year Edition is rated E for Everyone with an ESRB descriptor of Mild Fantasy Violence.  While you can get squished and sliced, you just kind of poof out of existence when this happens.  Reading skill is somewhat helpful for the instructions, but not necessary as the game is pretty easy to figure out just by playing.  Younger players and less experienced gamers may get frustrated at the high difficulty, though.

Tags: Game Reviews