This review was originally published on the Console Purist Facebook group on May 18th, 2019. A few typos have been corrected.
It’s a warm Saturday
today. It’s time for PlayStation Basement. PlayStation Basement is brought to
you every Saturday with a review of an odd or obscure game for the original
PlayStation. Games are rated Good, Bad, or Neutral. Now, let’s go!
Let’s
continue on from last week’s FoxKids.comMicro Maniac Racing and talk about more cartoony running games. There are
actually a lot of running games on PS1: Running
High, Oh No!, and Pepsiman come to mind. Floating Runner: Quest for the Seven
Crystals is more of a platformer, but it has those classic tank controls
that the PlayStation made famous. The game was published throughout 1996 by
Kokopeli in North America, Xing in Japan, and THQ in Europe. The game was
developed by Xing who handled ports of In
the Hunt, Pu-Li Ru-La, Three Wonders, and console versions of
PC adventure game Prisoner of Ice.
Xing also worked on many licensed anime games for Gun Frontier, Tenchi Muyo!,
and 3x3 Eyes. Let’s get running.
The North
American and European cover art for Floating
Runner shows one of the heroes, Lay (presumably supposed to be “Ray”)
firing a pistol in the air among some floating islands. I like the CG style
employed here, especially the many shades of blue. Interestingly, the muzzle
flash of the pistol carries into the black spine that says “PlayStation”. The
title text is a very fiery, 90s gradient on block text. The Japanese version shows the
same scene with some differences. This time the image is a drawing and shows
both heroes, Lay and Cress. Lay looks angry, while Cress looks a bit shocked.
The text here is a rainbow of pastels.
Both cover
arts represent the game well enough. Floating
Runner is a time capsule of early 3D. It has bright colors, blocky
characters, minimal shading/textures, and lots of floating platforms as seen in other games like Crash Bandicoot
and Bubsy 3D. The enemies and worlds
have varied designs. I really like the cool blue colors that were in a few
other Kokopeli games too (Robo Pit
and In the Hunt come to mind).
Unfortunately, I can’t appreciate the graphics as much as I should be able to.
The game has a low draw distance, pop-up, and a camera that’s too close. You
see your character mostly from above, but, with the fast movement and
platforming, you really need to see ahead. The game is also one of a few titles
from this era, mostly N64 along with MediEvil
2, that make me feel sick.
Floating Runner’s sound is fine. The
sound effects are what you expect – bright, cheery blips. The music varies
between memorably great and minimally mediocre. It’s similar to the superior
tracks in Bomberman 64 and the Kirby series, which makes me want to
just play those games.
The gameplay
is the real problem here. There are problems all over the design. The tank
controls are clunky but doable. You can strafe too, but your character jumps
when doing so. Often, I just fell of a platform when trying to strafe. The
close camera and smooth polygons make platforming difficult. It’s hard to tell
what’s ahead or get a sense of depth. I got stuck on the same jumps numerous
times. Other times, I had trouble navigating the levels. At times, you really
need to explore the different worlds to figure out where to go. This is a good
idea, but the execution makes it painful.
Floating Runner features tons of enemies. Either character, Cress or Lay,
can shoot and also utilize other weapons such as shields, bombs, or fire rods
to attack. The extra weapons have to found in the levels and require gems to
use. Enemies drop gems, which also increase your score. The weird thing is the
enemies are mostly just a nuisance. If you run out of health, you can continue
immediately from where you fell with almost no repercussions other than
resetting the score and gems. You have infinite continues too. Shooting is
awkward anyway; your shots fly in a short arc, requiring a precise distance to
make contact. Jumping on an enemy’s head is easier. Mostly, it was the easiest
to avoid enemies.
The real
enemy here is time. You start each level with a counter of 99. Confusingly,
what would seem to be a second on the counter is more like 10 seconds of time.
Therefore, you have over 16 minutes to finish each level. If you run out of
time, you lose the game. You can’t save or continue from there either; it’s
just game over. I guess, technically, you can save, but you only save high
scores. There doesn’t seem to even be an option to view them afterwards, so I
don’t know what the point even is. I didn’t even get the chance to put m
initials in except for one time.
The 16
minutes of time is often more time than necessary, but a few levels are really
impacted by the camera or the slippery platforming. Sky world’s second stage is
composed of slides that require precise jumps to continue. If you miss the jump,
some make you start from nearly the beginning of the level. There are a few
other places like that in the game too. When I finally did the jump, I didn’t
even see how I did it; I randomly pushed the jump button and made it. Forest
world suffers from slippery platforming on trees. Swamp world requires the
player to look around with the stiff camera. It is important to note that you
can set the camera to be more directly overhead in addition to the default
behind (but mostly overhead).
There are
six main worlds in total along with a final world and a very short beginning
world. Each world is made up of two stages. When you finish a world, you touch
a crystal. The crystal changes color every few seconds. The color determines
which world you will end up in next. Completed worlds cannot be done again. The
color situation is really weird and confusing at first. I think it would have
been better looking and more understandable to have a Mega Man-esque level select screen.
Floating Runner: Quest for the Seven Crystals
has some interesting ideas, but the game does not know how to handle them.
Platforming with tank controls is weird enough, but the camera, annoying
enemies, lack of real continues, and mish-mash of ideas hurt the game
considerably. I thought I would like this game a lot, but it mostly ends up
annoying.
Floating Runner: Quest for the Seven
Crystals receives a Bad.
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