Game Review: Polar Panic

Polar Panic : Busy Gamer Rating 5

Polar Panic : Busy Gamer Rating 5

First Glance:
Cartoon-y, winter-y, arcade style puzzler. Kind of like trying to solve a puzzle while playing Pac Man.

The Short Story:
Polar Panic has you playing as a polar bear, trying to navigate through a world filled with ice block puzzles and the goons of an evil corporation on a quest to save your bear-napped family. Choose from Story Mode, Puzzle Mode, or Survivor Mode (which can be single or multi player)- whichever way you go, its going to involve sliding and smashing blocks of ice, smashing blocks of snow, and with the exception of puzzles mode, smashing goons. FYI- Those trappers might look kinda like Santa, but they’re only jolly after they bash your skull in.

The Score:
The phrase “it is what it is??? comes to mind… Polar Panic is an arcade-style game, so it should be judged as such. But its not an arcade game so phenomenal that it would tempt hardcore gamers to get caught up in it. It fails to transcend its’ genre. That said, its not an absolutely awful game. I won’t pretend that I didn’t start to enjoy watching the swell of blood as I smashed an enemy with a block of ice.. but I didn’t start to enjoy the game until about an hour in. Up until then, the negative aspects of the game were more apparent to me. I give Polar Panic a Busy Gamer score of 5, with the caveat that you probably won’t want to play it for more than an hour a day anyway.

Body of Review:
I get excited about a game when I hear someone say “I usually don’t play (game genre here), but I really loved (game name here). Now I admit, I am not a huge fan of arcade games aside from those that trigger my nostalgia, and I tend to view puzzles more as an obstacle I have to get across to get to the next part of my game than the fun of the game. But I went at Polar Panic with an open mind, hoping I would find myself surprised at how addictive it was. It fell a bit short. When I brought in a second player (one who is more fond of puzzles than I) to help me test the multi player, his most memorable quote was actually, “Well, looks like that’s about it. Can we stop playing now????

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So what was so unremarkable about the game? The controls largely consist of directionals and XXX..X..X…XXXXXXXXX… and the game itself is overly repetitive. The level of difficulty also seems arbitrary- some levels are so easy you think you’re playing a game for toddlers, but they may be preceded by a level that is so frustrating it really is “mind-numbing???, to quote the game’s own copy. The story is extremely childlike but not in an endearing way, and is more of an encumbrance to the game than anything. In puzzle mode, every puzzle you solve unlocks- surprise- another puzzle, which isn’t problematic in and of itself, but they could have thrown in some different sorts of rewards or different ways to unlock the rest of the puzzles to make it a bit more interesting. In story mode, the save system is such that one small mistake can set you back to repeat quite a bit of game play, and if you quit before you beat every level in the chapter, you have to start back at the chapter’s beginning. Which wouldn’t be so bad if the game weren’t already repetitive. Also, it seems as if the darts fired by the hunters behave a bit inconsistently, sometimes killing you when you think they are too far out and sometimes letting you escape by a very narrow margin.

Had I been playing for entertainment and not to review, however, I may have missed some of the positive aspects of the game because I doubt I would have played long enough to notice them. The basic concept of the game is good in my opinion. The mechanics, although simple allow multiple approaches to the same situation. You can try to arrange your ice blocks to block enemies, try to get in position to smash the enemies, or bulldoze through the ice to get to some other area of the field. The music is pleasant, and although it is repetitive, it doesn’t get maddeningly annoying. And I do approve of the ever so slightly graphic animation of blood when you smash your enemies.. makes you feel like you’re doing something worthwhile.

The multi player is a lot more exciting than single player, but it lacks some sort of a device to make it interesting over time- I feel like in order to make its playability stretch over an hour long session, you need to set up a tournament between several players, or gamble on the outcome or something. It would actually make a nice drinking game- since the matches can potentially be very quick, having the loser do a shot could get crazy fast. And the frustration of some of the levels does pull you in a little, you just keep trying and trying just because you want to stick it to the proverbial “man??? that’s holding you down.

Polar Panic now on XBLA and PSN

There may be a certain demographic of player that this game is absolutely perfect for, but for the life of me I’m not sure who it is. The story and the art and the over simple controls suggest that it is a child’s game, but the difficulty of some puzzles and the number of attempts it sometimes takes to beat a level seem incongruent with a small child’s attention span. I certainly doubt it will score much play time with those who consider themselves to be “gamers??? per se. Perhaps it would be enjoyed by aficionados of Facebook or Yahoo Games, or older players who once loved investing their quarters in arcades but didn’t keep up with R1, L2, and Left Stick, or those who have fond memories of Pengo. (although the bear’s not as cute as Pengo!)

For me personally, it does take me back to my childhood a bit.. It seems like a game you would play when you’re about ten, and you go with your mother to visit your aunt, and the two of them want you to leave them alone to discuss your grandma’s new boyfriend and there aren’t any other kids for you to get in trouble with, so you play whatever video game is available with your sister who doesn’t even like video games. It’s not painfully bad, but when presented with other options, it fails to give you a strong reason to play it.

Posted By Rika Hollinshead Stead

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