A five year labor of love, Explodemon is here, despite the odds placed against it. But does the hard work and dedication show through in the game? Continue on to find out!
Explodemon takes you through a interstellar journey as a fighting robot known as Explodemon. Deemed a failure and a hazard to all around him, he was originally locked up and hidden away in a cryogenic prison. However, when the planet is invaded and the guardians refuse to take up arms, Explodemon is able to break free, and decides to fight against the Void in order to save the universe, and redeem himself.
The game itself is a 2.5D platformer, featuring 12 levels of pure destruction. You’ll be constantly blowing up hordes of alien robots and dashing through a vast array of puzzles, all the while engaging in a boss fight every 2 levels. Explodemon can obtain upgrades, such as faster explosion regeneration, bigger blast radius, and even more armor. The game’s difficulty scales quite well, although the last boss fight is an extreme pain in the back side. And although the controls for the most part are well thought out, the lack of the ability to use the D-Pad for movement, is an extreme let down, as it makes some of the more precision dependent challenges a chore to do with the analog stick.
In terms of a sound track, there almost isn’t one in this game. There’s a few different tunes here and there, nicely done tunes mind you, but after listening to them loop a few times, they start to grow old quickly. The sound effects are rather well done as well, though again, not a whole lot of variation.
The art direction and over all design of this game are fantastic. The colors are vibrant and defined, the creatures, though lacking any real variation, are well rendered and thought out. Explodemon himself feels like an homage to Megaman, or perhaps Protoman would be the better example, due to the red color scheme. All in all, this is a rather enjoyable game to look at.
For the price tag of $10, it’s hard to argue against checking this game out. Sure, it’s a bit on the short side, lasting only about 2-3 hours, but in that same regard, so were the Sonic games of old; and we had to pay full retail price for those. Plus, there’s a lot of hidden items to collect and discover for completionists out there, which will easily tack on another few hours. And if you’re a trophy hunter, the challenge of getting 100% of the trophies will certainly keep you busy for some time to come.
I give Explodemon on the PS3, a 6/10. It’s not a bad game by any means, it just could have used a lot more variation, and the ability to customize your controls would have been a much welcomed feature. Plus, unless you really loved the game, or are a completionist, you probably wont play through the game a second time. Still, any platforming fan, especially those of the 16-bit era, should definitely give this game a buy, as there is still a lot of fun to be had.
+ Balanced scale in difficulty
+ Fun, easy going story
+ Tight game play
- Extremely short
- Not a lot of content
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