Adventures of Chris has caught me a bit by surprise. On the face of it, it appears to be a fairly simple platformer. However, there’s a bit more to it than that on top of it being hard as balls. I’ve enjoyed my time with it mostly, but it brings some old school design choices in that I’d sooner have seen left behind.
The actual gameplay consists of left to right platforming and combat against various enemies. There are several zones to play through, each with their own theme and setting. We play as the titular Chris, who is abducted out of the blue via a magic portal and comes face to face with a young vampire. Things go down and Chris leaves with the ability to inflate like a balloon at will. Red Art Games use this ability to give the levels more verticality as well as devise sections that require some deft skills to pass. Each stage is broken up into small chunks which also act as checkpoints, and man, I’m glad this is the case.
Chris starts off incredibly weak, so much so that even a couple of brief blows are enough to kill him. Again, the check-pointing is generous enough to not make this too much of a hassle when traversing the levels, but we definitely need to collect as many cookies – the games currency – as possible along the way. These can be spent back at the hub world on upgrades to his health, magic, inflations or new clothes that offer buffs. Even at max health he still dies pretty damn quick but the upgrades do make it that bit more bearable as we can almost brute force our way through some tricky bits if needed.
Each area ends in a boss fight, and it’s here that the difficulty ramps up. There are nine areas to play as we search for other kids that have been afflicted by the vampire, and most of these end in a tough fight. We can play them in any order though there doesn’t seem to be any ‘right’ way to go about it. What this means is the chance is high that we’ll pick a fight we will struggle to win – exactly what I did.
After a tough level, I was faced with a Sea Urchin that absolutely decimated me repeatedly. At this point I had already unlocked a couple of magic attacks, but my magic meter was so small that it meant I had to spend far too long dodging while waiting for it to refill. Frustrating, but made even worse by the random and erratic nature of the boss attacks and patterns. I found it very hard to predict the next move throughout almost all of the boss fights, and even when I’d powered up a fully, a good fight could be turned around in the blink of an eye as they moved onto their next phase of attacks. Each boss has a large life bar, and each third we remove has them try a new attack before combining and powering them up for the last part.
In premise this isn’t so bad – even if it felt a bit cheap at times – but even a fully powered up Chris feels sluggish to control. This has the knock on effect of rapid boss attacks that are all but impossible to avoid due to us simply not having the means to do so. It’s a very old school approach to fights that feels a bit out of place today. By all means make the game challenging, but give us proper tools to defend ourselves with at an appropriate time.
When it’s not being super tough though, Adventures of Chris is a good nod back to the games of my youth. The platforming levels are fun, with plenty of mix ups to the flow and styles and have a few little collectibles hidden about to find. Some of the enemies can be a bit of a challenge but we can also leave levels at any time in order to go back to the hub and get a new upgrade. Permanent checkpoints are available at the start of the boss fights too, so if we get really stuck there is at least the option to dip out and come straight back later on (although I didn’t know that until after the Sea Urchin…).
Conclusion
Fans of 90’s style platformers will want to check out Adventures of Chris. It can feel a bit unfair at times, especially in regards to the boss fights, but persevere and there’s a decent platform adventure to be found here.
This game was reviewed based on Xbox One review code, using an Xbox Series S|X console. All of the opinions and insights here are subject to that version. Game provided by publisher.
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