Twisted Pixel is the zany studio responsible for some of the most bizarre and enjoyable games of recent years with their most well-known title being the fantastic ‘Splosion Man. It may come as no surprise then that they had been tasked with adding their trademark silliness to the next generation with LocoCycle being a launch title for the Xbox One in addition to also providing an Xbox 360 version too at a later date and boy is it an experience. You’re immediately thrown into a generation long since forgotten with a live-action video introducing the games characters and plot, something seldom seen since disc-based games originally hit the scene back in the 90’s.

Big Arms Corporation has created a sentient motorcycle named I.R.I.S who ends up getting struck by lightning. While being repaired she awakens and spots a TV commercial advertising a Freedom Rally in Scottsburg, Indiana. She becomes obsessed with the idea of going there. Unfortunately for her mechanic, Pablo, he’s coming along for the ride after getting his trousers caught on I.R.I.S. and unwittingly becomes her passenger as she drags him on a bizarre 5-6 hour road trip. Sounds insane right? You’d expect nothing less from Twisted Pixel, but does this new title live up to their well-received back catalogue? Is it a good game and how do the two Xbox versions compare? Let’s find out.

The games sets you on a journey across five stages, each divided into three parts with a final boss fight usually taking place at the end of the third chapter. You’d hope these five stages would be radically different, but apart from a change in theme (from desert to snow for example) there is very little to choose between them. Arguably the biggest difference is turning into a boat and heading out over the sea, but in reality this plays identically to when you are in bike form.

In each stage you drive along a predetermined route on a winding highway. Your movements matter very little here and you can simply let go of the controller and you’ll still reach the same destination. Your only hazards are the Big Arms enemy forces sent to prevent your escape and bring you back to their lab. Holding RT initiates an upgradable boost, while tapping LT fires an initially difficult to aim gun, but that is also upgradable and thank god it is because it is woeful in the early stages. A slightly odd addition is the use of a melee system using the Y and X buttons which deliver a punch to the enemies directly in front of you and a backwards swipe using Pablo. Quite honestly these very rarely came in use and never seemed to have the range to hit any enemies.

While we’re on the subject of enemies let’s explore them a little more. Recycled is the first word that comes to mind. Endlessly is another. There is quite a range of enemies but the ones you’ll constantly see are guys in cars. Simply shoot until their health goes down, they’ll explode and you repeat for the next wave. This is such a shame as Twisted Pixel are usually great with their imaginative games and though some enemies show promise they don’t appear nearly enough or provide enough of a challenge to be anything other than a recycled enemy in a different skin. You’ll get various car and bike enemy types, a ton of jet-pack enemies and little else more to really mix it up. After the first stage you’ll already have stopped seeing them as a hazard and simply view them as a small annoyance.

Twisted Pixel has tried to mix LocoCycle up a little in the form of a mini-game during the driving sections. However they miss the mark once again. I.R.I.S could breakdown or you may need to dodge some falling rocks in a canyon. These are all done in the style of a QTE section. And an incredibly vague QTE section at times too. During the repair sections you need to move Pablo around the bike until you’re prompted to start a QTE and even then the instructions are pretty poor. It’s just a bland way to mix it up and they were never too enjoyable.

You’ll frequently come across some combat sections in which I.R.I.S will launch herself at the enemies and you’ll need to battle multiple bad guys and counter accordingly. In a typical hack n’ slash style, this is done well, you’ll learn combos and when to counter as well as specific enemy weaknesses. In LocoCycle you can just mash a bunch of buttons and it’ll work just as well. There’s no skill here. Occasionally you’ll get a big prompt over an enemy letting you know you need to counter him. Tap A and it’s done. If you’re mashing buttons anyway you’ll likely counter it without even realising. These should have been exciting moments, but once again it’s a section requiring very little user input.

The better you do at levels the more points you’ll earn to upgrade your peashooter of a gun and enhance your bland fighting skills. This system is in the game simply to say they have an upgrade system. It’s poor. You’ll upgrade everything in full way before you finish the game and some of which seem to have little to no impact in the game anyway. Twisted Pixel seems to have had many ideas here that were either never finished or never correctly thought out.

The differences between the Xbox 360 and Xbox One version are very few but are actually quite important. My first experience was with the Xbox One version. Graphically it was very poor, so much so I just assumed I was playing the Xbox 360 version ported straight over to the next-gen in order to try and cash in on the small launch line-up. That wasn’t the case. The Xbox 360 version is somehow worse. Graphics aren’t as smooth or detailed, and I use detailed very lightly here, and it just looked like an early Xbox 360 title rather than one coming out in the final years of the systems life. LocoCycle isn’t even the best game graphically that Twisted Pixel has released. The Maw and their ‘Splosion titles have had cartoony graphics, but they suited the game style perfectly, something that cannot be said for LocoCycle.

Another key area was in the controls. Now this might be due to the Xbox One controller still getting updated and refined but I found the next-gen experience far less responsive and floaty than its Xbox 360 counterpart. While the controls only really come in to play during some scripted fights I found it far more enjoyable on the Xbox 360.

Finally is the installation. For the Xbox One you install and play, it takes a while (welcome to the future of gaming) but you know what to expect by now if you were an early adopter. The Xbox 360 changes it up and once you install the game you also need to install a 2GB datapack, a first for me to be honest, I’m not sure any other titles have this datapack feature. My issue here is not the datapack or size of the datapack; it’s simply that every time I tried to play the game I was prompted to download this again. Oh and don’t even think of trying to download it in the background. If you quit the LocoCycle title screen the download just stops without so much as a warning. I don’t believe this is an issue that’s affected everybody, but it did have an impact on me. My only option in the end was to download the pack and just play straight through the game, fully completing it in roughly 5 hours. I was incredibly thankful it was a short title, but I’m not sure why this datapack isn’t included as part of the initial download.

LocoCycle isn’t your typical game. It’s graphically poor with a weak, repetitive battle mechanic and bland level design, but it is probably one of the most interesting games to be released recently due to its sheer lunacy. For the vast majority of gamers this will be a game you’ll want to pass on. However if you’re a fan of Twisted Pixel’s previous work, or just fancy something a little goofy, then maybe pick it up if you can get it cheap. It’s not their strongest title, not by a long margin, but the zany humour and unique premise may appeal to you but be warned, it’s a pretty generic, bland, no more than a 5 hour campaign, it’s unchallenging and simply a waste of an afternoon.

At the very least we should celebrate the fact that studios such as Twisted Pixel are still around. A group of like-minded people wanting to create unique games rather than being drawn into the cash cow that is the modern day FPS-heavy gaming world. It’s just a shame they couldn’t create anything better. LocoCycle is out now for Xbox One, Xbox 360 and Steam.

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