I love web animators. I just love them to death. From Egoraptor to Harry Partridge, the internet has been a space where animators have an almost limitless amount of space to practice and hone their craft. Albeit while sacrificing a lot of their sleep schedules. But thanks to them we have classic internet series like Happy Tree Friends, Klay World, Dick Figures, and today’s topic Llamas with Hats by Film Cow Jason Steele.
Now for the average viewer of Jason’s work there is usually a single word that crosses their mind. Crazy. From Marshmallow People to Zulway God of Mercy, Jason has this nak of taking the completely surreal and random and packaging it so it’s completely rolling on the floor hilarious. That is the same for one of his most popular series’ Llamas with Hats, the story of Paul and Carl, two llamas, wearing delightful hats as Carl viciously skins, mutilates and eats his fellow man and Paul berates him afterwards. It became a monster hit on youtube racking up millions of views, and spawning three more episodes after the first. But now it’s game time for Carl and his elf hat.
The context is mostly explained in the
youtube trailer for the game. One day after Carl nails some hands to the wall he discovers that he can magically awkwardly walk now. There’s only one thing Carl can do now, recreate the cruise scene from Episode 2 and once again joyfully kick vacationers off a cruise ship. Now Cruise Catastrophe is another in the line of Impossible games, much like the game Regular Show: Nightmare-athon I reviewed a couple of weeks back, the main goal of the game is to rack up the highest score as possible. But while Nightmare-athon had levels, Cruise Catastrophe is one long impossible game that you only lose once you miss kicking 10 passengers off the ship.
The controls of the game are clear as day if you look at the screenshots. Yep, it’s a virtual joystick control scheme, with the joystick to move carl. Now I have played a bunch of handheld games some of them with these virtual joysticks and every time I always felt this awkwardness to them that I could never formulate into words until I saw this episode of
Extra Credits. To paraphrase, while designing for a touch screen based system you have to think of your hands as part of the system, utilizing basic hand motions like flicking, pinching and so on because these sort of movements are simply the most natural to execute. But this is really only the case when you use one hand to play. Virtual Joysticks like this game’s obviously use two hands as it’s trying to emulate a classic controller but there is one main issue. There is zero physical feedback. Unlike with a real controller where you are physically touching a piece of plastic and are able to dictate just through touch how hard, and what direction you are moving the joystick, virtual joysticks are just that virtual leaving movement to feel slightly unresponsive and sticky. Plus with your two big ass thumbs sliding around the screen you also can accidentally block your own view.
A touch based movement control system like in Regular Show: Best Park in the Universe would have been a better choice as there is an actual physical feedback through tapping the screen. But nevertheless despite this one control issue it still functions properly it’s just that a control scheme better suited for a touch device would have been nice. To get back on track from that tangent there are a couple of power-ups in the game that Carl can grab. Dollar signs are extra points, the POW is a special move that kills all enemies on screen, hands give you an extra life, and faces make you lose a life.
Now lastly there is the sound design of the game which I gotta say is top notch. Not only is the menu music just hauntingly awesome the voice work in the actual game is hilariously fantastic with tons of in-jokes galore for the hardcore Film Cow fans. I guess that really segways into my final thoughts. The people who will like this game are only FilmCow fans, with it’s brand of surreal humour it won’t sit well with most people who aren’t already fans of the Llamas with Hats series. The game itself is functionable but it feels as though there could have been a better control scheme then the one we got. If you are a fan of Llamas with Hats and think you can spend a buck on a game with a slightly weird control system then I say get Cruise Catastrophe.
SCORE: 6 OUT OF 10
Taylor Wyatt is a 24-year-old writer and producer. He has gone through the Toronto Film School for TV and Film Writing to develop his production and writing skills, implementing them into several independent film projects, music videos, and short film anthologies. He is also the co-owner of the online production company ToonGrin.com and the host of the animated review show Cartoon Corner.
"There are also other characters that come and go (also owned by the Warner Bros. Discovery conglomerate media company)."
Huh. Is that just referring to other characters from the show itself, or is this implying that the new season is going to have cameos from other WBD IPs