I’ll get straight to the point. Screwjumper really sucks. For those of you that require reasoning for this statement … read on.

Screwjumper is a game that sounds like it should be a lot of fun. In the fictional Screwjumper world, automation has phased out the job of “screwjumping”, essentially a job where miners freefall down a mineshaft. You take on the role of a renegade miner out for revenge on former employers. Working as a mercenary you offer your services to rival corporations, wreaking havoc on those that have wronged you, while picking up a pay cheque in the process.

As you can see, so far it sounds like fun. Unfortunately what sounds good in concept, does not always make for a fun gameplay experience.

Gameplay:

The main premise of the game has you free falling down a mineshaft. Your job is to destroy enough items on the way down, to disable the shield around the reactor core at the bottom of the mine. In order to disable the shield there are destructible “green items” that will lower the shield’s power, and deadly “red items” that will hurt or kill your character. The left trigger activates a speed boost, which allows you to tear through green objects, however boost for too long and your character will die. The right trigger allows you to throw sticks of dynamite. The dynamite can be used to take out either red or green targets. Your miner also has an air brake which will allow you to slow your descent, adding some maneuverability.

Once you reach the bottom of the mineshaft, you will either die to poison gas if the reactor’s shield is still up, or you will be able to toss a stick of dynamite that blows the core. You then will rocket back up the shaft in an attempt to escape the mine before it blows, an obvious take on the Millennium Falcon’s Death Star escape in Return of the Jedi. This is probably the only enjoyable part of the game.

The main problem with Screwjumper as I see it, is that the controls just don’t feel very responsive. It’s extremely difficult to move your character around, and very easy to hit the red items that eventually kill you. Often red and green targets will be placed in a frustratingly random order, and it feels seemingly impossible to avoid the red while smashing the green. Because of this you will constantly be employing your air brake, reducing the sense of speed that is supposed to be what the game is all about.

Graphics:

The graphics really do not look good in my eyes. I’ve seen better looking games on my old N64 and PS1 to be honest. While there weren’t any noticeable frame-rate issues or anything like that, the graphics still looked like something from yesteryear. As somebody who plays a lot of video games I was really disappointed with the overall look of the game in general. Most of the green and red targets look the same, the mine shafts became a blur of mediocrity. Most of the levels look pretty much the same with a few twists tossed in as the difficulty progresses.

Sound:

The music is mostly techno beats, because, hey nothing says, “this is the future” like techno right? The explosions are a non-stop to the point that you hear nothing BUT explosions.

Longevity:

The game offers 3 different modes and 20 different levels. Each level feels the same, albeit with an increasing difficulty level. The 3 modes consist of the regular game, a time attack mode, and a “race” mode that allows you to take on either one other person locally or 3 other folks on Live. Unless you’ve got a local friend to play with, good luck finding anyone else to play against …as the online seemed dead as I tried at different times to find people to play against to no avail, unfortunately.

In addition to these 3 modes, the player has regular Live Achievements to look forward to as well as the challenge of unlocking new playable characters as they progress through the game.

The problem as I see it is that despite these different options I really doubt anyone will care enough about the game to actually make use of these attempts to prolong the longevity of the title.

When a game really and truly isn’t fun to play from a game play mechanics perspective, you can have all the modes in the world and it still won’t keep gamers coming back for more.

Overall:

As you can probably tell I really did not enjoy this Live Arcade title. There’s been a ton of great games released for 800 points on the service, I can tell you that Screwjumper is not one of them. While I can appreciate the developers tried to do something different, in this case different does not always mean better.