Motorbike Stunt Agent Julie

Christ, my right hand hurts.  I began playing Motorbike Stunt Agent Julie at about noon today.  Now, it’s nearly twelve hours later and I finally have finished the game.  Oh, it doesn’t have twelve hours of game play in it.  Maybe two hours tops.  No, it took me twelve hours because Julie’s control scheme is one of the most torturous I’ve ever encountered and I required multiple breaks to ice my hand and cry.

Before I get to the game, I have to comment on the mind-numbingly fucked up storyline.  You play as a former MSA reconnaissance agent who specializes in doing flips on a motorcycle to infiltrate enemy territory.  No really.  I’m not fucking with you here.  And she gets pulled out of her gig as a stunt woman by Polish Intelligence and has to oh my God I can’t go on.  This shit is surreal.  Salvador Dalí would blush.

The game itself is a little more straight forward.  You ride around on a bike, doing flips and shooting things down.  I learned two important life lessons in this game.  First, an Uzi can take out tanks and fighter jets with just a couple of shots.  Who knew?  Second, and most importantly, injuries including but not limited to bullet wounds can be healed by doing back-flips on motorcycles.  I never would have guessed that would work.  Following the publication of this I plan on hijacking a Harley and flipping off ramps to decripple my hand.

I wasn’t trying to be cute or humorous when I started this review by immediately bitching about my hand hurting.  Even just one or two levels of Motorbike Stunt Agent Julie are enough to induce physical pain.  The control scheme is just too flawed.  You have to use the right trigger for the gas while simultaneously holding the right analog stick to fire.  Needless to say your thenar eminence is going to hate you.

Just Google it.

Motorbike Stunt Agent Julie combines elements of twin-stick shooters with stunt-racing and the end result is a game that oozes with potential.  After a couple of levels you get the ability to use a nitro burst to help launch off of ramps.  While doing this, you’re supposed to flip through the air while still shooting stuff.  Even later in the game you’re given a combo system that you can fill to restore health.  At first I thought it was dumb and ignored it.  But once I figured out the benefits of doing it, I became a combo craving nutcase.  This culminated in a bit where I went off a ramp, boosted in the air, did multiple flips while shooting at various landmines and rocket launchers, bounced across the top of five fighter jets, hit the nitro boost again, blew up the jets, flipped a few more times, then shot a tank on the way down.  Most shocking of all, I actually stuck the landing and the combo counted.  It was pretty much the coolest single moment I’ve had as the Indie Gamer Chick thus far.  Sure, my hand was filing for legal separation, but it was worth it!

Having said that, twenty levels is just way too much.  After a while the game doesn’t have anything else to offer and you just keep repeating the same missions with different backdrops.  Occasionally they’ll throw you a crap one, like having to blow up warehouses.  They’ll also send some extra baddies at you but they’re pretty easy to figure out.  Most of the dangerous stuff fired at you can be shot out of the air with one bullet.  As far as changing locales goes, on one stage the ground will be green and the next it will be white.  Feel free to sarcastically spin your finger in the air.  I would if I still had working fingers.

Motorcycle Stunt Agent Julie wasn’t much to look at.  The graphics are very minimalist and all moving characters are represented by silhouettes.  The music is perhaps the worst thing about this game.  It’s really annoying Euro-pop crap that’s sure to cause your ears to projectile-vomit out puss.  There’s also voice acting that developer Mattini Games is quite proud of.  I’m sure they are, in the same way I was proud of the ceramic duck I made when I was six-years-old.  It felt cool to be involved in its creation, even if our respective creations were of poor quality and likely to induce some kind of toxic shock upon use.

So the graphics are poor, the music is awful, the controls could very well cause injury, and the whole experience is repetitive.  Bad game, right?  Wrong.  It’s actually fun.  At least in spurts.  I really had a great time trying to pull off the highest possible combos.  Bouncing myself off planes and carpeting the terrain with bullets was hugely satisfying.  Overall, I would say that Motorbike Stunt Agent Julie is worth your dollar.  And hey, mix it with some extended Guitar Hero sessions and a good wanking or two and you could very well destroy your hand and land yourself a monthly disability check!  Cha-Ching!

Motorcycle Stunt Agent Julie was developed by Mattini Games

80 Microsoft Points regrets the jokes I found funny at age 22 in the making of this review.

Follow me on Twitter and Facebook for a chance to win 1600 Microsoft Points.  Click here for details.