"Mwahahahahaa, I am the ghost of Chubby Gristle"
First off I feel I should apologise in advance for any and all innuendo in this post because it’s going to be inevitable when discussing any game with “Willy” in the title. Yes, here we have yet another game based on Jet Set Willy that has popped up (oof). Calling itself Willy’s Mountain Party it’s an online game running in Flash with a high score table so you can duke it out with other Willy players (stop it!) around the world (certainly more so than I can at MySpeccy.org at the moment what with their emulator running too fast on my PC as it’s often wont to do, grrr). My own first impressions of Willy’s Mountain Party are a bit mixed to say the least, mainly because some of the room designs are a bit annoying (case in point, try taking the lower left exit from the bathroom at the start – nice placing of a baddie, eh?) but also because there’s a strange mix of high and low-res graphics and the animated blocks in many of the rooms that are a bit groo-inducing. And, even with a broadbeans internet connection it still takes nearly as long as a real spectrum game to load in, possibly due to the music.
It still shows some signs of being a solid-enough Willy-clone, though, for those willing to persevere, so you might want to give it a shot by clicking on the link here.
Tags: indie games, online games, platform games
22 May, 2009 at 7:27 pm |
A harsh but fair review, Matty. I do find the mix of differing resolutions quite bilious. Why do so many Willy remakes completely ignore the original’s success and abjectly refuse to improve on any of its weaknesses?
22 May, 2009 at 7:31 pm |
Good questions. I feel that too many people, when writing JSW clones, tend to forget that the feeling of a cohesive environment was important, that these really all were rooms in a mansion as well as interesting challenges gaming-wise. I’ve seen far too many clones where the rooms feel all over the place and have no real running “theme”. Top Hat Willy and Willy’s Weirdy Nightmare (which I’ve covered before) are two of the only ones I’ve seen that manage to create a cohesive environment.
28 May, 2009 at 10:57 pm |
Thanks for suggestions, I will try to do a better Willy adventure when I came back from holiday.
Bye.