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  1. What happens when Mad Max gets a little too insane? You'd probably end up with something like Clustertruck from developer Landfall Games and publisher tinyBuild. In this physics based "truckformer" players are sent hurtling from one truck to another in a death defying race to the goal line. With a variety of special abilities to help you'll leap from one truck to another, sometimes mid-air, as the game throws hazard after hazard at you. The gameplay makes for a decent pick-up-and-play platformer, but some of the clunky controls and frequent freezes put a damper on the high octane fun. This may come as a shock, but storytelling isn't big in Clustertruck. In fact, it's nonexistent. This is straight up classic platformer gameplay: select a level, dive right into the action, and move on to the next. As barebones as that may seem Clustertruck would probably only be even more ridiculous if it tried to add some sort of overarching narrative. Though it would be nice to know where all these trucks came from. The basic gameplay is pretty simple: jump from one truck to the next in order to reach the goal. On the first level this is pretty straightforward with plenty of trucks around you, all heading toward the goal point, but pretty soon you'll encounter insane level designs that challenge your ability to stay afloat in a sea of crashing and exploding trucks. There's an impressive variety of challenges across the 100+ levels in the game, from simple hazards like logs strewn across your path to insane dangers like leaping high into the air in order to reach another truck on a different path. Players that love these kinds of twitch-reflex games will get a big kick out of Clustertruck. Additionally, you can spice up the gameplay by selecting up to two abilities to use in each level. Many of these abilities make the game easier, such as an ability to slow time which helps with aiming your landing on a truck, and there are even a couple of abilities strictly for the sake of messing around and making the gameplay even crazier. You need to unlock abilities by spending style points, which you'll earn by playing, so you won't have access to these features immediately, but you'll be glad you have them once the level design gets intense. As fun as the chaos of jumping from one truck to another can be, it is also pretty frustrating at times. For one thing your movement is a bit more stiff than you would imagine for a fast-paced physics platformer like this, particularly when you're trying to make slight adjustments to the left and right. It doesn't help that jumping is mapped to the A button, which makes it a little hard to smoothly jump and keep your bearings by looking around with the right control stick. The momentum of your movements can also be a little inconsistent. Managing you momentum is incredibly important in Clustertruck, but sometimes it seems to send you careening off with no control over your speed. If you touch anything other than the trucks you fail the level—which includes being hit by things like flying debris and lasers—so most of the time you'll end up playing a level over and over before you get one successful run. Perhaps even more confounding is the way the trucks move a little differently every time you play a level. It adds a little variety to the game, but when you're trying to perfect your run through a stage it can lead to a maddening level of trial-and-error as you keep replaying until you reach an attempt where the stars align. The trial-and-error gameplay wouldn't be as tedious if it weren't for the fact that Clustertruck is terribly buggy at times. It seems to affect specific levels, but there were points where the game would freeze every time I failed a level, and sometimes even when I completed the level. For the most part I was able to turn off the game, reload it, and try again, but the frustration of this process came to a climax on the final level of the campaign where the game would not only freeze when I died but also failed to save the fact that I had beaten the previous level, meaning every time I attempted the final level I would have to go through the second-to-last level as well. The final level is challenging enough on its own, but adding in the frustration of restarting the game every few minutes and it almost feels like the game is actively encouraging you to stop playing. Note: The developers are working on a patch; as of posting the game is still buggy Clustertruck on Switch is also oddly lacking in some features that you would just assume would be part of the package in a game like this. For a game centered on perfecting your ability to fly through a level and earning style points while doing so, it is honestly shocking that there's no scoreboard. And not just an online leaderboard: the game doesn't record your best score or time on any level at all. It seems like an obvious feature for this type of game, and it really doesn't make any sense not to include it. Much like how Clustertruck isn't big on storytelling, it is also not too concerned with complex graphics or music. To be fair there's nothing wrong with the visuals or audio, both are perfectly serviceable, and there's even a certain charm to the no-frills visual design, but when you're seeing the same barren landscapes and repetitive background music on one stage after another, from one failed attempt to another, the presentation ends up feeling pretty bland. Clustertruck is an absurd but entertaining chaotic platformer, the kind of game where you can't help but be impressed at times, even if you end up failing a stage. There's a decent amount of variety to the level design, even if it feels repetitive thanks to how often you'll likely end up replaying each stage just to finish it once, and the optional abilities not only make the game more manageable but also add a nice degree of customization. Unfortunately, Clustertruck on Switch also shows a lack of polish, and the frequent game freezes only heighten the sense of tedium and frustration that comes from failing a level fifty times in a row. With the game as unstable as it is right now there's little incentive in investing in Clustertruck's unique brand of physics mayhem. Rating: 4 out of 10 Trucks Review copy provided by publisher Clustertruck is now available on the Switch eShop for $14.99.
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