Comic Jumper: The Adventures of Captain Smiley

The Short


Pros
- Over the top brand of humor
- Three unique worlds that emulate the style of different comic books
- Massive amounts of unlocks including themes, movies, etc.
- Mix of platforming, duel-stick shooting, and third-person shooting
- Manga and "Silver Age" Comic worlds are pretty hilarious

Cons
- Overly difficult and unfair
- Extremely repetitive
- Humor gets in your face too fast, too often
- "Conan" world comics are very lacking in the others' style
- Lots of unlocks are great, but it takes a very, very long time slogging through the same levels to get them all

As you can see, there are both comics and jumping in Comic Jumper

The Long

I make no secret in declaring my adoration of Twisted Pixel. I think they are a company that has risen above many other indie studios with a mix of humor, unique ideas, and just general cleverness. The Maw is one of my wife and my favorite games, and Splosion Man was also an excellent, overly difficult platform (ala Super Meat Boy). I also liked their follow up to Comic Jumper: The Gunstringer. 

Unfortunately, though, all my biased love can't argue against the fact that Comic Jumper has a lot of problems, many of which will turn most people off.

The comic eras you go to are very true to the source material. It looks really great. 

Captain Smiley is a washed-up comic book hero. Nobody wants to buy his lame books, people would rather use them as toilet paper than actually read them (as explained in a hilarious FMV video at the beginning), and he's basically about to be out of a job. Luckily, in an incredibly meta twist, Twisted Pixel buys Captain Smiley's comic line, and decide the best way to get him back on his feet is to insert him into different genres of comics throughout time, until he has enough of a following again to launch a new line of comic books starring himself.

It's a silly story (that reminded me a bit of Matt Hazard, with the characters being self-aware of their plight) and as a whole it really just exists to show some interesting version of Captain Smiley and push forward the humor. Which brings me to the first problem.

Nanoc. Get it? It's "Conan" backwards. Like "Alucard" and "Dracula."

Twisted Pixel is known for their humor. The Maw was a mix of subtle and over-the-top humor, expressed through no dialogue whatsoever. Splosion Man, as well, had a hefty dose of humor with no words actually being spoken. Well the voice actors are here in full force in Captain Smiley, and are ready to fill your ear-holes with gobs of humor. And by humor I mean in your face, forced, crass "jokes" thinly connected to what is going on in the world.

The main issue with this is most characters (Star [the annoying star in Smiley's chest], Brad [Smiley's gym-visiting, girl loving arch-nemesis], etc.) are either boring and lame (like the lady above in the "Nanoc the Barbarian" era of comics) or act like obnoxious, loud 12-year-olds who think they are funny (Star being the main offender here). While I can get the jokes are that these characters are annoying (and hence why Smiley's comics stopped selling), nearly everything they say is grating and unfunny. It wears on you quickly, especially since they tend to never shut up. 

It isn't all bad. A few lines are actually decently written and performed, though I'd say 20% would be a decent estimate of the good ones. The actual idea leads to lots of funny, silly situations (including the Silver Age having the main villain be a feminist crow and every offensive word being "censored" and fined) which are then beaten over the head with more crass dialogue. There is nothing subtle here, and when something looks like it is about to be the game makes sure to remind you, like a young child, that it is doing something clever. "Look at that! Ha, aren't we funny!" The game very much screams at you, and you just breath a sigh and pat it on on the head and think "Very good," the magic gone. 

Anime world is pretty funny on its own. No need to beat the joke home, Captain Smiley

I bring up the humor so much because it obviously is supposed to pull the gameplay forward, which isn't very good. The is essentially a platformer with duel-stick shooter controls: left stick moves, right stick aims and shoots, A jumps, etc. As a whole this should work, as it runs a lot like the Metal Slug games (which I love), but there are a few fundamental flaws. First off, your character starts off extremely weak and underpowered. I understand this is supposed to make the game more "difficult," but when I'm spending 5-10 minutes on a miniboss in the first level, something is wrong here (especially when there are three of them in a single level). The game is also not particularly liberal with checkpoints, meaning it's very easy to get to the boss, die, and have to start the whole tedious affair over. Bullets don't stagger or slow enemies, which means they'll just keep coming as you desperately try to get out of the way. 

The difficulty is weird, because sometimes it's stupidly easy (regular enemies die really fast) and other times it's really hard (it switches to "third persion" view, which basically turns into a light-gun style game, meaning you take a lot of hits). Once you upgrade the game becomes almost a total cakewalk, with the exception of the last level which is pretty dang hard. It's just a poorly balanced experience, which jumps between "frustrating" to "boring" very quickly, which is bad. 

Despite only having eleven levels, all of which are reasonably short, the game drags.

Graphically, the game is using the Twisted Pixel beard engine, which means it looks passable technologically and great artistically. The difference between the worlds are drastic, and they really adhere to the theme completely, which works. Manga world was a particular favorite, with Captain Smiley having no idea what was going on in the crazy japanese book (and making you go right to left vs left to right) as stuff just gets weirder and weirder. The art style is probably the biggest and best joke in and of itself: it sells its premise well in hilarious and bizarre ways. If only we could shut Star up long enough to enjoy it. 

And you have the Twisted Pixel guys watching your every move. 

As it stands, it's hard to recommend Comic Jumper. It bounces between being brilliant and being horrible, with its humor both helping and hurting it on every turn. The weak gameplay only makes it harder for me to recommend it, because you'll be essentially playing it just for the story, and as I've said it's pretty much hit-or-miss. 

I paid $15 for it, which I think is a bit too much, especially considering the game is short. It's $10 right now, but I think getting it on sale for $5 is actually a pretty good deal. But I'd recommend watching a few clips of it on youtube: if you dig the humor, jump on it. If you don't, ignore it completely.

As it stands, two out of five is my consensus. At least Twisted Pixel seemed to learn their lesson when they made The Gunstringer. It's just too bad this game stands pretty clear as a dud in their otherwise excellent career.