City Jumper

Ugly but fun

Reviewed by Shawn from afro-ninja.com

In City Jumper, you control a little stick man in his quest to jump over any and every possible vertical barrier. He’s the city jumper, and it’s his job. You have a choice between making a big jump, making a small jump, and waiting. It’s a pretty simple set-up, but it will get you hooked trying to figure out just when to make that next jump.

The levels are split up into sets of four, stacked in layers. When you beat a level you progress down to the next level (and earn an extra life) until you hit the bottom, where you start the next set of four. The levels include all kinds of obstacles to jump over or avoid, including houses, trees, buildings, bridges, skyscrapers, storm clouds, trolley cars, and so on. With only two jump heights to decide from, it’s usually not that hard to figure out which one to use. The real challenge is the timing of the jumps, as you will often jump just a little too early or late- resulting in you hitting the obstacle, or not being able to complete the next jump properly.

The graphics are pretty bad, but considering the main character is a stickman, it’s not like they really add anything to gameplay. Individual objects are drawn nice, but the contrast of all black background and neon green border is ugly. There’s no music either, but I was so entertained by the ‘chka chka chka’ running sound that I didn’t really care. The death/splat noises are also humorous.

The controls are simple and responsive, but sometimes it’s hard to time it so that you jump immediately after landing, which is required often. You can also press down to wait, but the only time you’ll ever need that is when a hobo decides to make his way across the level. It’s pretty rare, and chances are you’ll end up dying from it anyway. You can also snag seagull bonuses for some extra lives. Unfortunately the placement of them is completely random, and a lot of times they appear inside of obstacles or other impossible-to-reach locations. City Jumper isn’t pretty by any means, but the simple gameplay will suck you in.

Click here to play City Jumper






Comments (2) [view all]

  Latest comment left by nakamis:

thanks

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