Laughing Jackal is starting to become one of my go-to publishers for cheap, quick games. And "cheap, quick games" is not a criticism, either--sometimes that's exactly what I want, and it's something the PS Minis line excels at (or should). That's not to say that every Laughing Jackal game is great (I wasn't too enamoured of Ace Armstrong vs the Alien Scumbags!) but most of their games are pretty good, and a few (like OMG-Z) are among my favorites of the year. Orbit is a solid, above average game that's well worth the purchase price.
Title: Orbit
Publisher: Laughing Jackal
Developer: Laughing Jackal
Date: December 2011
Format: PS Minis (PSP/PS3)
Rating: ESRB E (Everyone: Mild Fantasy Violence)
Genre: action/arcade
Keep It Simple
I feel like I've said this a million times before (so please bear with me), but often the best games--especially the best PS Minis--are based on a super-simple concept or mechanic and build from there. Orbit is no exception. There's a basic story involving space exploration and two crazy scientists, but the game is mostly about launching your character and collecting gold coins as you fly through assorted planetary land-and-space-scapes.
Of course, it's not quite that simple, because that would get boring fast. Instead, each level lets you amass money to buy upgrades to your ship (and the term "ship" is used rather loosely here), which in turn help you fly farther (you have to circumnavigate each planet to unlock the next one) and steer marginally more accurately, to collect the bonus artifacts (on the planet's surface) and blueprint fragments (in the atmosphere).
Each new planet ramps up the difficulty a little bit, too, with more and more space junk in orbit, and more aliens intent on stealing your fuel or your gold, or on splattering your windscreen with slime.
Stupid
No, Orbit is not actually stupid, but it's . . . shall we say "unsophisticated"? And I mean that in the best way. It's got flat artwork reminiscent of recent TV cartoons, which perfectly suits the game and the silly humor. And there's a lot of silly humor. From a "ship" that's essentially wooden boards strapped to the character's arms so he has to flap his arms to stay aloft, to recycled toilet and bathtub parts, this isn't subtle, nuanced comedy. But it shouldn't be, I don't think. The ridiculousness of the whole concept adds to the appeal and should make Orbit a good game for a wide variety of ages.
Like the visuals, the sounds are basic but well-fitted to the game. While there aren't a lot of different sound effects, each one adds a note of fun. Bump into a fuel-thieving alien, for example, and you hear a sipping sound. Hit a slime-flinging alien, and you get a "splat". The music is also not complicated, but manages the difficult task of remaining--for the most part--not annoying, while still being necessarily repetitive.
Imperfect
While Orbit is a decent game, well worth its purchase price, it's not a perfect one. It's best played in short sessions, for example, because longer play really underlines that repetitive tendency I mentioned above. In fact, each planet follows the exact same path--with a little more difficulty added each time--to the point that the two characters make a joke about it halfway through the game. However, its fun enough that playing for shorter times pretty much overcomes the feeling of just performing the same action over and over.
One tiny quibble I had was that there was no single screen to show what all the buttons did in each context. Instead, pressing "select" in different contexts would bring up the controls for that particular screen. For example, on the planet screen you'd see what each button would do for selecting planets. To find out what the controls do when actually flying the ship, you have to press "select" on the launch screen, which took me a while to figure out. But possibly I'm just slow. And as I said, it's a tiny quibble.
A somewhat less tiny complaint is that, although you can supposedly steer your ship with the d-pad, the amount of control you have is so minimal that I ended up using just the rockets. The lack of maneuverability means a fair amount of frustration as you watch your character zip past the blueprint fragment you're aiming for and missing it by just a tiny amount. Added to fact that sometimes your ship could appear to touch things and not be affected by them, and other times barely contact another object but still lose fuel or get slimed, and I found myself having to set the game aside from time to time. Even landing on an artifact on the surface sometimes seemed more difficult than it should have been.
On the other hand, I suspect that correcting these elements would make the game too easy, so take my complaints with a grain of salt. Or a whole spoonful. In the end, Orbit is a solid entry in the PS Minis line-up, and works really well as a quick pick-up-and-play game to fill in some time. It's definitely fun enough to make it worth buying.
