{"id":21837,"date":"2021-12-14T00:01:08","date_gmt":"2021-12-14T00:01:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/?p=21837"},"modified":"2021-12-04T13:25:00","modified_gmt":"2021-12-04T13:25:00","slug":"clockwork-aquario-ps4-switch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/2021\/12\/14\/clockwork-aquario-ps4-switch\/","title":{"rendered":"Clockwork Aquario (PS4, Switch)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>There once was a video game company called Westone that made a lot of popular titles, such as the Wonder Boy and Monster World series, and was even responsible for some of the Adventure Island games, too.\u00a0 But did you know their last arcade game was never released?\u00a0 It was called Clockwork Aquario and was supposed to be out in the early 1990s.\u00a0 But because of the popularity of one-on-one fighters and a low score in test markets, this 2-D action platformer never came out.\u00a0 Until now.\u00a0 Join a heroic boy, girl, or robot as they venture to an underwater city to stop a fish-man from taking over the world with his robotic sea creatures.\u00a0 Clockwork Aquario is available to download on PS4 and Switch, but reviewed on PS4 here.<\/p>\n

You can choose to play as a boy, girl, or robot, but they all control the same.\u00a0 Two players can go at it together as well.\u00a0 You can stun enemies and pop balloons by hitting them from above or below, or with a short ranged attack.\u00a0 Stunned enemies can be hit again to destroy them, or you can pick them up to throw at other enemies.\u00a0 You can get hit once before being defeated, but can pick up power-ups that refill your health, make you invincible, or let you shoot stars for a limited time.<\/p>\n

I just love the colorful graphics and rare arcade oddities like this.\u00a0 But I had a few problems with it, too.\u00a0 Hit detection felt a little off, and there are no instructions to tell you what to do.\u00a0 With five short levels, each with a boss at the end, the game can be over pretty quickly.\u00a0 As an arcade game, it\u2019s also hard with a lot of cheap deaths to make you put in more quarters.\u00a0 And that\u2019s the biggest problem is how they separated the difficulty levels in this game.\u00a0 There is a practice mode where you get infinite credits, but can only do the first two levels.\u00a0 The other difficulty modes give you limited credits, starting with 9 on Easy and going down from there.\u00a0 But in my opinion, when you pay for an arcade game like this, I think you should be able to put in as many credits as you want to see the whole game no matter what.\u00a0 But other than that, if you like rare arcade games like me, you still may want to check this one out.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Kid Factor:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Clockwork Aquario is rated E for Everyone with an ESRB descriptor of Mild Fantasy Violence.\u00a0 You can stomp and throw robotic fish, and when you get hit you just fall off the screen.\u00a0 Reading skill is helpful for some of the text, but not necessary just to play.\u00a0 Younger gamers may have trouble with the arcade style difficulty, though.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There once was a video game company called Westone that made a lot of popular titles, such as the Wonder Boy and Monster World series, and was even responsible for some of the Adventure Island games, too.\u00a0 But did you know their last arcade game was never released?\u00a0 It was called Clockwork Aquario and was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":21830,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21837","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-game-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21837","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21837"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21837\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21839,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21837\/revisions\/21839"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21830"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21837"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21837"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21837"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}