Oozi Earth Adventure (PC) Review
Mark Adams / Mar 1st, 2013 No Comments
Oozi Earth Adventure
Oozi Earth Adventure is a 2D platform game by Awesome Games Studio. It would not look out of place if it had been released during the Commodore/Amiga era, albeit a good looking 2D game of yesteryear. The story is as generic as these games get, as it follows your alien character who has crash landed on a strange world and must find his missing gear and ship to return home.
It all sounds pretty generic, but thankfully in this day and age there are not too many 2D platform games around. This works in Oozi’s favour tremendously as picking up the Xbox controller on this PC game you realise just how much fun 2D platform games can be when they are programmed correctly.
Gameplay
Oozi Earths Adventure has a number of modes of play, with Story Mode being the main single player campaign, Arcade Mode being time-limited and a special challenge mode. The Story Mode is the mode that most people will play, and is the game in which you can really enjoy reminiscing about old-skool 2D platformers.
Your character (Oozi) starts off being able to do simple moves, and as the game progresses his move ability increases, finally allowing you to double jump, or do a slam-dunk which shatters the ground below the character or knocks things off ledges. Oozi can be controlled by moving left or right, jumping and looking up or down the play area. This is a straight forward 2D platformer, so the idea is literally to go around collecting stars, and jumping from one point to another point, climbing up ropes and jumping down the landscape while avoiding such things as turtles, snakes, hedgehogs, various spiked objects and most deadly of all (as is always the case for aliens), water!
The control of Oozi is a high-point in this game, as the character handles perfectly, acknowledging every touch of the controller and jumping where you expect him to go. Just like all good platform games, the jumping feels just right, so you are not left floating or feeling like he’s made of brick. It’s these small niceties that make the player feel as though they are playing a quality arcade game.
Graphics
The whole world of Oozi Earth Adventure is beautifully drawn on 2D, in a cute cartoon style that really does the game justice. In todays gaming most games consist of greys and browns, but Oozi is colourful and vibrant, with the backdrops being well designed without obscuring gameplay, and the foreground being particularly beautiful. The animations of the various game characters, as well as the main game character Oozi is very impressive, and the whole art-style of everything within the game is fluid to watch in motion, giving it an almost organic feeling. The presentation of the game is simple and to the point, and it is reminiscent of games you would have played back in the 16-bit era. This is not a bad thing and adds to the games charm, it will definitely take some people back to a time that they remembered so fondly.
Sound
The game’s one Achilles Heel is sadly the sound. While the sound is in no way bad, the tunes themselves are quite short and on a loop, so even on the shortest levels you will hear the tune end and start quite abruptly and the whole thing just does not flow as you would expect. The sound effects within the game are much the same as the tunes, as in they do the job, but seem to be an afterthought compared to the thought and detail put into the graphics. The sound is not awful, it just seems to have not as much attention given to it when compared to the stunning graphics.
Overall
Oozi Earths Adventure is a good old fashioned 2D platform game, the level of difficulty can be set as required but it easy to run through and a joy to play. For anyone who remembers playing this type of back in the day, it’s a nostalgia blast that excites the player as the play through it. For younger players who may never have played this type of game, they should find enough fun and gameplay to keep them coming back for more.
Note: A copy of the game was provided to Gaming Illustrated by the developer for the purpose of this review.
Mark Adams
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