Clustertruck

I've seen a lot of people pointing out the fact that this seems to be an extremely common game to see YouTube commentary channels using in the background of their videos, and after playing it and getting to know this game better, it now feels very clear why that is the case. To me the first immediate reason why this is is just due to the sheer greatness of such a concept, essentially giving that imaginary person who parkours across the scenery when your mind is wandering in a car a tangible form. There are few games I can think of that strike such immediately excited reactions as "A 3d platformer where you jump across the roofs of trucks to get to the goal", and trust me, I've gotten the reactions of quite a few people with that pitch alone.

Of course though, what's a concept without sufficient substance backing it up? This is the other component of Clustertruck that makes it the ideal sort of game to be putting on while talking about other, unrelated stuff, this component of course being its visual presentation. The tasteful low-poly artstyle combined with the lack of any major scenery models that aren't directly on the main paths allows for a constantly easy to follow, focused gameplay experience that can be understood in mere moments of looking. This makes it a game that even during the most chaotic of sections, where trucks are flying off the road and exploding everywhere, the path to victory remains extremely clear throughout, naturally directing the player towards their goal, which is further reinforced by having the player usually follow the path of the trucks. This simplistic artstyle is also excellent at contributing to the creation of some nice atmosphere from stage to stage, be it the endless expanses of emptiness of a snow covered landscape giving everything a sense of massive scope, or the intense orange glow of the skybox in hell just further adding to the chaos of the scene. This makes the game constantly visually interesting and distinct, making it a constant treat to watch, and getting the most out of the simplistic look it goes for. There's also the sense of spectacle through watching the oncoming trucks drive horribly and crash into one another, knowing that the player will need to still somehow jump at them to continue pushing forward, turning flashy, action packed moments into more than simply window dressing, but core aspects of the gameplay loop, making it far more suspenseful not just to play, but even to watch.

With all this said, while insanely fun and exciting to watch due to the above reasons, I also feel quite mixed on this game because of the core gameplay itself. No matter how many bells and whistles you add to the presentation of this game, there's still the inherent problem with the type of game this is trying to be, that game being a first person 3D platformer with small platforms that move in unpredictable and flat out inconsistent ways. There are a variety of places in the game where things tend to go from a fun, intense time, to borderline unplayable because of this, depending on how much the difficulty and heavy platforming aspects are focused upon. Whenever the level design revolves around throwing a gauntlet of obstacles at you, the fun often grinds to a halt due to focusing more on acts of precision, rather than fast paced stunts and taking as many pointless risks as possible just because it's cool, highlighting the game's shortcomings. Often from stage to stage, there's a distinct sense of sameyness in the first 3 worlds and the 8th one, just under half the game, where the additional concepts introduced feel as if they don't alter one's approach in a meaningful enough way to justify so much time being spent in them. This leads to chunks of the game feeling somewhat underwhelming and uninteresting due to the repetition that ensues. Part of this issue is alleviated thanks to the additional abilities that get given to you, but many of them end up feeling like the same thing just with slightly different ways of activating them, once again feeding back into this cycle of repetition that the game finds itself in at times.

That said, despite my general thoughts about the gameplay being often flawed and missing the mark in places, I can't entirely write it off because of one other element that is what brings this game entirely together, and that's the game feel. More than any other aspect here, the game feel is often straight up phenomenal, with the way it gives the player a real sense of weight to their movements being a particularly pertinent aspect of it. The sound design is honestly amazing at providing a lot of satisfying feedback that makes every correct move you make feel amazing, with when combined with the style point system and the insanely fast paced, hyped--up music, it all lends itself to a great experience. It ends up being a feeling of pure awe inspiring spectacle that encourages you to make absurd, often stupid risks even if you aren't attempting to go for any of the extrinsic rewards the game provides you, it's just that good at encouraging a very flashy playstyle that lends itself to these big risks that end up making things more difficult than they reasonably should be. What makes this such a clever aspect of the game is the way it makes it less likely that the player will attempt to optimise the fun out of things, which is something that could very easily happen with a platformer where the platformers move directly into the goals. All in all this aspect of the game goes an extremely long way in making it an entertaining experience, even if my issues still stand.

Overall, this is one of those games that is admittedly way nicer to watch than to actually play in a lot of circumstances, with the presentation of it in practically all aspects being the best part of it, making it look considerably more appealing than I personally consider it. That said, there's also a certain level of challenge to this that I really enjoy, focusing almost exclusively on fast reflexes and adapting to a constantly unpredictable set of circumstances that are in front of you, rather than being about memorisation to any significant degree. I still do feel the need to criticise a few parts where the game just doesn't feel suited to the sort of gameplay here, particularly those that focus extremely hard on precision or the final boss, who basically makes the fast paced nature of the game grind to a halt, but on the whole, despite its flaws, I still think that this is a fun game. I'd recommend this to people who are looking for a fast paced, relatively difficult 3D platformer with amazing presentation and concept, but it's definitely not a must play, especially for those who like their games to be a bit more on the slow side, because that crowd will get very little out of this.

+ Challenging and fun.

After the rise and fall of CS:GO surfing background footage came the complete dominance of Clustertruck footage; and to be completely honest I don't see the hype. It's not that this game is awful at all; some of the level designs are really cool and emphasize both speed and thinking fast. Others, however, fall more under the category of "bash your head against the wall until the dent is big enough to fit through so you can progress". Awkward power spikes are pretty evident in this game, however most, if not all of the time it's still pretty enjoyable apart from one key part of the movement; that being the strafing. Strafing doesn't feel as responsive as in a different platformer I happen to like more, Verlet Swing, which has strafing that feels just right to me.

IDK, Clustertruck just wasn't for me. It wasn't necessarily awful and wasn't necessarily great. I thought it was pretty much just OK; although speedruns for this game seem pretty cool.