I mean, fuck me twice, its good.
Really, really good.
I did enjoy the frolics with Gamecube VLM, but was always gagging for Jeff to take the environment and build a playable game around it.
And thats exactly what hes done. Its as mentalist-psychedelic and pyrotechnic as youd expect, but also beautifully refined in terms of difficulty balance/risk & reward.
The visual and technical audacity is breathtaking. It just feels beamed in from another planet. Ive absolutely no idea where to start having an idea about how its done, but if it looks like magic and feels like magic
Its like a bench-test workout for yer high-def telly. After all those nice, placid, colourful games displayed very calmly and correctly, Space Giraffe is like a big fat can of spinach to a Plasmas Popeye.
Think of Geometry Wars as a 9.99 Standard Family Box sensibly rationed in the back garden, with the Firework Code rigidly observed, watched through the windows just in case the kiddies get scared. Space Giraffe is like strapping on a jet-pack and soaring and swooping around the Sydney New Year display while ripped to the living tits on mescalin.
Knee-jerkers might twitch about it being another Tempest And it sorta-kinda is. But more like Tempest 2000 Ultra-Deluxe with all the faintly annoying stuff taken out and some really, really ace progressive game mechanics weaved in.
Instead of just constantly trying to keep everything away from the edge of the web and always being rammed into a defensive, siege-mentality corner (my gripe with Tempest all along) youre now rewarded for playing in a much more free, open, strategic and (best) aggressive way - harvesting points, boosting a bonus multiplyer, always always pushing the line between pure survival instinct and score maximisation.
In short, my idea of gaming heaven pretty on the outside, wild at heart.
All the usual obsessions are there - but in a funny, light, lovable way. The character of text announcements is cute enough (Top hole!) but the sound design is laugh-out-loud astonishing: a spasming cacophony of bleats, yelps, barks, shrieks, Jarvis game steals, music and film samples
And the pacing is perfect. Not just in terms of gameplay/difficulty curve; theres a constant slideshow of spooky, mind-warping background images and textures and zapping, synapse-like white flares. Its fucking cinematic - like a hallucinogenic, inner-space odyssey into the designers minds and pop-culture cues.
But the really great thing about Space Giraffe is that it feels like Jeff loosening up and getting back to all the things that made us love his stuff in the first place - an unadulterated love of old-school arcadey gaming filtered through his unique, idiosyncratic goggles.
I give it six-and-three-quarter stars. Out of five.
Red, shiny ones, with a sort of fucked-up, glowing, pulsing, transcluscent, reptilian, mind-clearing quality about em.
