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Frantix is the latest puzzle game to appear on the PSP and while it seems to have the perfect recipe for a good puzzler (simple premise, agonising pain, joyous sense of accomplishment and absorbing gameplay) something just isn’t right. While the best examples of the genre may seem insane, only for you to cross that boundary into gaming heaven, Frantix might simply make you go insane.
To begin with everything goes smoothly enough. You’ll learn everything you need to in the opening tutorial levels, with the core idea of collecting gems before passing through the end gate seeming relatively simple. Of course, things do become significantly trickier. You’ll have to use crates to get past obstacles, evade enemies, go against a clock, use speed-ups and more.
Before too long you’ll be tearing your hair out, with one mistake often ending your chances of successfully completing a level. Thankfully you can restart without sitting though a soul destroying loading screen – something that could well have crippled the game. On your tenth (or in many cases higher) attempt at a level, when you’ve finally sussed out what needs to be done and in what order, and managed to get it all accomplished within the punishing time limit, there is a huge sense of joy. In that moment it all seems worthwhile, but it is merely a moment.
There are simply too many things that stand in the way of constant enjoyment. The camera often causes problems that weren’t intended to be there from a level design point of view, and the character’s fixed grid movement is often awkward to control. If you don’t release the direction button in time your character will proceed onto the next square in the grid, often doing something that will end the level. It’s all well and good making a game rewarding, but the balance needs to be perfect. Being tortured for ages, with next to no reward doesn’t make you keen to progress through the levels.
If you do get into the punishment/reward gameplay style then there’s a fair amount to enjoy. Set across six worlds there are 185 levels to play through, with each taking anywhere from 20 seconds to a few minutes to complete. Oddly, there’s also a short movie on the UMD. The Chubbchubbs is an Oscar winning animated short that features some lovely furry creatures and some not so lovely razor sharp teeth. In truth, you’ll have more fun during these six minutes than you will during the entire game that Frantix offers. Harsh, but fair.
Puzzlers don’t have to look great and it’s often best for the designers to go for clarity over style, but this is another area where Frantix doesn’t deliver. The core gameplay is so simple an overhead viewpoint would have sufficed, and some crude but clear colours would have made for a perfectly playable game. Being a PSP game the developers obviously felt compelled to make the game 3D and it doesn’t do the game any favours. Textures cause confusion at times due to their lack of clarity and the aforementioned camera (despite giving you the option to alter the viewpoint) throws in problems that a puzzler simply shouldn’t have.
Audio is equally uninspiring, with barely a sound effect to be heard and a soundtrack that does little to raise your excitement. You may actually opt to play with the volume turned down as the main character emits a grunt each time you bump into something. With the recently released GripShift combining a great soundtrack and solid visuals to make a unique puzzle experience, Frantix reeks of dullness.
Frantix has some pretty big flaws in its design, but it still provides some mild entertainment. If your idea of fun is near-constant failure then your enjoyment of the game will increase tenfold, but most people will prefer something that dishes out rewards a little more frequently. Frantix is a simple game that goes out of its way to create problems that had no reason to be there.
