Urban Space Squirrels

I seem to find it harder to write about games that I don’t enjoy at all.  This is my sixth attempt at getting a review out for Urban Space Squirrels.  And I plan on it being the last, so I better get it right this time.  It’s a puzzle-platformer where you play as fluffy squirrel who can throw bombs to activate switches or launch himself in the air.

In theory, the bomb-jumping mechanic should work like the morphing ball bombs in Super Metroid.  That’s not the case at all here.  You control your squirrel with the left stick, control the bomb with the right stick, launch a bomb with the left trigger, and detonate it with the right one.   It’s way too complicated, the video game equivalent of rubbing your belly and patting your head while swinging a hula hoop and doing your taxes.

Later on,  you’re given even more bombs to manage and a broken wall-climbing function.  Allegedly you use the left stick along with the A button to do this, but the game was really fickle about when it would work.  More often then not I was forced to tap the A button to pull it off, and this is while I’m also supposed to be placing and detonating bombs mid-air.  This entire control scheme needed fine-tuning in a big way.

Urban Space Squirrels ultimately has nothing enjoyable about it.  The control is terrible, the graphics look like a cheap flash-based browser game, the music is awful, the sound effects are grating, and the entire concept of the game is hugely boring.  I can’t believe this showed up on a few “best of XBLIG” lists.  Did anyone who praised this shit actually play more then the tutorial on the demo?  No?  Well thanks a bunch guys!   Now someone out there might choose this over that swanky pair of denim jeans for their avatar.

Urban Space Squirrels was developed by DTA Entertainment

80 Microsoft Points were shot with a BB gun in the making of this review.