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Lococycle

Lococycle

A crazy motorbike, a reluctant sidekick, the open road and Robert Patrick. Should be good, right?

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Lococycle is an Xbox One launch title from Twisted Pixel (it's also coming on Xbox 360, but we reviewed the X1 version). The studio that had previously delivered The Gunstringer and 'Splosion Man has created a game that, on paper, sounds really interesting. So much so that it was one of the first games downloaded to the next-gen console after it arrived, with our interest piqued due to the unique premise. Sadly, the promise and premise of Lococycle is about as good as it gets, from there on in it's a slippery slope downwards.

It starts off with a live-action introduction. B-list actors stand around at a party; we're introduced to badly dressed generals, hammy villains, and the two super-bikes that feature most prominently in the game. The whole introduction felt a little on the cringeworthy side. It's trying to do homage to B-movies, the kind of films that revel in their low-budget origins and flirt with viewers via tongue-in-check humour and ropey visuals. It didn't work - in trying to ape something that's beautifully bad, Twisted Pixel has inadvertently made something that's not very good.

Perhaps if it were just a live-action film, one of those two quid jobs in HMV or with a two star rating on Netflix, it'd be different. We'd be celebrating that crapness with friends as part of a terrible movie marathon night. We'd no doubt extract some twisted pleasure from the atrocious acting, the rickety plot, and the horrible script.

Instead, the honky live-action scenes are punctuated by playable missions, and rather than being able to endure and laugh at a ninety minute movie, we're forced to play through several hours of monotonous gameplay bookended by low-budget, low-quality cutscenes.

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Players assume the role of I.R.I.S., a newly sentient motorbike (she was struck by lightning, if you can believe that). Following the incident with the lightning bolt it appears as if the bike is in need of repair. The mechanic tasked with fixing this heavily armed super-bike is called Pablo. During that introductory scene in the garage, an advert comes on the television for a motorbike rally, and I.R.I.S. decides that's where she wants to go. Pablo, who's ankle somehow gets stuck on the side of the bike, is dragged along after her as the bike starts its journey to the event in Scottsburg, Indiana.

Lococycle

Along the way I.R.I.S. and Pablo race down a number of roads, avoiding oncoming traffic and dodging a stream of incoming attacks from angry enemies seeking to reclaim the valuable self-aware military-grade motorcycle. At our journey's start the first thoughts were: "why isn't he turning into a bloody pulp as she drags him along?", and it's not long before you realise this whole debacle could be averted if Pablo just took his trousers off. It's a paper thin plot with more holes than a colander, but Twisted Pixel knows this and doesn't mind. After all, they're keeping the spirit of the B-movie alive, so we let it pass and get on with the game.

As the pair zip down roads and dirt-tracks in five different stages, various enemies are thrown at you and must be dealt with in several ways. The most immediately obvious method is via the underpowered cannon at the front of the bike. Over time you can level it up using credits earned in-game, and by the end of the game it's a relatively effective weapon, but only if you've maxed out the upgrades. I.R.I.S. also has a missile attack, but she can only use it in certain sections that play out from a different visual perspective.

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When she's not firing projectiles at her enemies, I.R.I.S. is engaging them in hand-to-hand combat. Forward attacks are done via a swipe of the front wheel, where rear attacks involve swinging Pablo as weapon. At certain sections I.R.I.S. and Pablo get stuck into melee combat with several combatants, and these battles take place in the air above the tarmac, and attacks can be linked together to create long combos. The are multiple QTEs that must be triggered along the way, either to boost your score for the level or to keep a combo running without interruption.

Pablo can be temporarily detached from I.R.I.S. and used as a deadly discus, spinning into enemies before returning to his place by the bike's rear wheel. Boss battles involve on-the-rails shooting sequences, aiming at moving targets, and taking out weak points (that are clearly signposted).

Lococycle

In theory that sounds silly, but fun. In practice it's monotonous and boring. The underpowered cannon takes an age to whittle down enemy health bars and is tricky to aim. The melee combat starts off fine, but it soon becomes clear that it requires absolutely no skill whatsoever (at one point I managed to string together a 500+ hit combo just by mashing buttons - I wasn't even looking at the screen for most of it). The QTEs break up the flow of the other combat scenarios, but it's not long before animations are being reused. Using Pablo as a discus provided some variation, but almost zero challenge. Likewise, the boss fights aren't particularly difficult, and most were bested at the first time of asking.

There's several sections that change up the formula in someway or another, but none of them really improve the overall offering. In certain battles you must dodge enemy attacks for a time, before hitting a QTE/counter-attack and then engaging in a short burst of melee combat. There's sections in the water, in the air, on road, off road, from the side, all providing a change from the vanilla on the track third-person view. A couple of times the road rage stops momentarily, long enough for Pablo to pull off a series of vague QTEs (in one such section we had to stop I.R.I.S. from being crushed by a train by fixing her engine in four separate tasks), but even with these changes of pace and a passable amount of variety in other areas, it's never particularly exciting. Perhaps the introduction of harder game modes would've provided additional challenge and longevity, but as it stands there's no option to increase the difficulty. You can, if you're desperate to get your money's worth, try and beat previous scores through repeat plays, but that's about it.

During the five different stages you'll come up against a selection of different enemy types, but not anywhere near as many as one might like in a game such as this. Challenges often repeat themselves, and there's only a few moments of genuine originality, and these sections generally get recycled later on. For the most part it just ends up being monotonous and boring.

During the different sequences, Twisted Pixel aims to spice things up via dialogue between I.R.I.S. and Pablo (he doesn't speak English so his lines are subtitled), whereby the bike misunderstands practically everything her human sidekick says, and insists on spewing out a constant stream of movie quotes, very few of which were able to elicit a laugh. One highlight is the character Spike, played by Robert Patrick, but even his solid voice work and the absurdity of his character isn't enough.

Visually, Lococycle isn't particularly strong. There's a playful, colourful palette to the art style, but it feels very cartoony and juvenile. Some of the enemies faced along the way are interesting (there's a definite Matrix agent feel to some of the characters), but none are particularly original and the lustre comes off after we see them constantly reappearing. All in all, it comes across as tired and uninspiring. There was some interest in finding out what happened at the end, much as there is in staring at a car crash to see what happened, but even our morbid curiosity wasn't enough to prevent the second half of the game feeling like a chore. There are plenty of reasons to pick up a next-gen console, Lococycle isn't one of them.

Lococycle
04 Gamereactor UK
4 / 10
+
+ Robert Patrick, the occasional joke hits home, some of the enemy types are fun the first time you fight them
-
- Monotonous gameplay, terrible story and cutscenes, reused enemy types, uninspired combat, no difficulty settings, debatable value
overall score
is our network score. What's yours? The network score is the average of every country's score

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Lococycle

REVIEW. Written by Mike Holmes

"In trying to ape something that's beautifully bad, Twisted Pixel has inadvertently made something that's not very good."



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