Pendulous

I’m sure there are games out there similar to Pendulous, where the idea is to swing from pendulum to pendulum trying to reach a goal in the shortest time possible.  I already had someone tell me that it’s not all that different from Jungle Hunt, a game I never played.  Jungle Hunt was a product of the Golden Age of Arcades, circa 1982.  I’m a product of unprotected sex, circa 1988.  However, as it turns out, Jungle Hunt is included in Tatio Legends for the original Xbox, which I actually own.  So I fired it up and discovered that the person was totally wrong.  Well, that was a waste of an opening paragraph.

The idea is you swing from spot to spot as a little cog thing, latching onto the nearest swing-point automatically.  Using the left and right triggers (or the stick if you’re an idiot, more on that later), you build up momentum to launch yourself to the next spot.  As you progress through the meager fourteen stages, various traps and obstacles pop up, including one annoying section featuring a red gunky sludge stuff that seemed to bubble up at random and was the only bit of  true frustration in the game.  Well, that and the fact that the developers made a liar out of me.

Dear Datura loving twats: that shit was NOT art. Now THIS is art.

When I reviewed Cuddle Bear, I noted that I would immediately discontinue playing any game at the first instance of a leap-of-faith moment.  So naturally Pendulous was full of those types of moments.  Only I didn’t quit the game.  I kept going.  And thus I’m a big liar.  At least my excuse is good one: Pendulous is a really well done game.  The problem is, there was no need to map the swinging mechanics to both the sticks and the trigger buttons.  The triggers work just fine, so the stick should have been used to move the camera.  There’s just too many spots where you can’t see the next object you’re swinging to.  Or traps that move up and down are off-screen, so you can’t possibly calculate when the appropriate time to jump is.  This was probably related to the porting of this game over from Windows Phone, which the developer noted to me had been the cause of a few issues.

This is where being The Chick is tough, because I have to say something that is probably devastating for a developer to hear: this game was so good that it had a spot on the leaderboard all locked up.  I really loved it.  This is exactly the kind of original, quirky type of game I expected to find in the XBLIG channel when I started this site, and it’s worth your money right now.  The length of the game didn’t bother me at all.  Fourteen quickie stages that are sublime (plus another 14 mirrored ones, snore)  is preferable to a four-hour game that struggles to tread water.  But that damn camera issue was like the iceberg to Pendulous’ Titanic.  Its chances were sunk.  All is not lost.  They already planned to add more levels, and Do Better Games are aware of my concerns, because I sent them a singing telegram.  Only I misread the job description.  It was actually a singeing telegram, who knocked on their door and proceeded to set himself on fire.

Well, they got the message.  The game needs a camera, and then they need to issue what could be the most important Second Chance with the Chick challenge in the history of this site.  They would probably get to it sooner, but because of my screw-up, they first have to clean up a hell of a mess on their porch.

Pendulous was developed by Do Better Games

80 Microsoft Points noted Polish is a nationality, not a race, so that technically makes me xenophobic, not racist, in the making of this review.

You can also read my buddy Hurley’s review at Gear-Fish for this very title.