Precision is Cactus's latest deconstruction and then resurrection of a popular game mechanic: precision jumps. The way this guy works, he sheds entire Alpha's like dandruff while sleeping, then finds them years later, decides to polish them up a bit -- so something he started in '06 is now released two years later. The result is a charmingly frustrating suite of levels that allow you to truly experience precision jumping in a way you never before imagined. There's more precision.
You're a guy leaping from roof to roof, trying to reach the ladder that will allow you to inexplicably fall from the sky into another building, and so the circle of life continues. The controls are inertia-based, so you run something like the clod from Castlevania III mixed with Mario. The results are like cake if you have a high threshold for repetition and a keen sense of pace, otherwise we're talking more like cake mixed with hot sauce. The dotted-line feedback gives you an idea of your last trajectory, which you would think would reinforce you toward more and more precision -- results may vary.
The most interesting thing about this game, which nobody else seems to have written about (thereby justifying this review) is the sun. When you begin the game you see a dial that you can turn with the arrow keys; it adjusts the position of the sun around the screen. For optimal viewing, I recommend something on the cusp of dusk. The radius of light pulses with the bass of the song's reggae-pop theme track, while the rays shift in accordance with the pitch, the way those little bars on a stereo console might, except arrayed in a circle. At first glance this dancing light might seem like a cute aesthetic distraction, something to help smooth out the frustrations of the experience with nuclear optimism. Then you have to consider, is the song trying to tell me something about how to play well? The answer to that is: no, but it wouldn't be too hard to buy that. It invites considerations of combining temporal, aural, and visual feedback to really streamline the learning curve. It stands as the basis for a whole new game, played with the fervor of a collective hallucination, like Nuestra Madre De Guadalupe or a UFO's hi-score.
Theres one word to describe
Theres one word to describe this game.
Pumping.
Fantastically simple, but done with enough panache and accuracy to be truly joyful.
I like the graphics, I like
I like the graphics, I like the soundtrack, but it's a bit too difficult to hold my attention. There are only so many times I can fail at making the same jump before I get bored.
I think that if the dotted line which trails you changed color based on your speed, it'd be a bit easier to memorize how to get through a level. "A red jump, then an orange jump, then two quick blue jumps." as is, it's mostly muscle memory, and it doesn't QUITE work in my opinion.