Lovely Planet is….. well….. Let’s just say that it is a First Person something rather than a First Person Shooter.
You play as an anonymous character who has to free a ‘Lovely Planet’ from bad guys or shapes who shoot back at you. Every time you get hit by one of their blobs of goo, you have to restart the level.
The game consists of you running through levels taking down bad guys using a magic wand type weapon that shoots hearts at your enemies. Your Character remains faceless throughout the whole game and you have no real idea as to what your circumstances are and why you are shooting these un-named adversaries or what they have done to deserve to be shot at.
The main premise of the game is to complete each level as fast as you can whilst also shooting all of the bad guys in each level. The levels can be completed in around a minute, meaning the game lasts roughly 80 minutes, meaning it has rather a short playing time.
The main theme of Lovely planet is plain and vastly sparse. Each level consists of blocky shapes that are either pink, green, yellow or blue. After a few levels of this, you soon tire of the same same levels, however each level has its own challenges and design meaning there is always a twist. The shooting mechanics in the game require absolute precision and split second timing which can make you feel like a pro or absolutely hate the game as you keep on missing your targets.
The Detail to each level is so abstract that ‘apart from feeling a sense of accomplishment’ you feel no connection to the world around you and struggle to differentiate between levels. There are good aspects of Lovely Planet like its ace shooting mechanics that rival any COD game and its interesting soundtrack that is a pleasure to listen to. However the positives stop there I’m afraid and apart from mastering each level after the 10th try, everything just turns into a hard pressed slog that makes the game feel like it has no character or passion.
There is absolutely no attempt at a story or any explanation as to why or what you are doing on this planet or even why you are attacking these brown blob creatures. The game makes no attempt at any form of explanation or tutorial as to how to play the game and instead you are just thrown in the deep end to slog through 80 odd levels of same same scenery.
Overall Lovely Planet relies on muscle memory and precision for you to get anywhere in the game, however, I suppose all games like COD rely on these same memories so as you can stealth kill the next Rusky soldier. Lovely Planet has a smooth and even frame rate that barely misses a beat as the graphics are so basic I would be surprised if it did not perform at optimal levels. If you are a gamer who doesn’t care much for story or meaning behind the game and you love chasing the perfect time and run on a challenging platformer then Lovely Planet is probably the perfect game for you.
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