Clive 'N' Wrench Review (Heartfelt)
I love and really enjoy the moment-to-moment collection and gameplay of Clive 'n' Wrench, but there are a lot of significant issues that do leave it feeling a little lacking. It's a game that feels like it's on the cusp of being a great retro-3D platformer collectathon but is being held back by lots of little oversights and a few glaring ones. A lot more fine-tuning in some places and more variety and depth to the content that's here is what's missing from this game.
It's also worth noting that while I have fun with this game, my standards for 3D platformers are comically low; I recognize that there a ton of issues that will be deal-breaking for other people, and so I cannot realistically recommend the game in its current state. Below I offer a list of what I consider to be "The Pros" and "The Cons" of Clive 'n Wrench
(+) A large variety of things to collect makes this a great game for anyone who loves obsessively doing checklists, and as a collectathon fan I find the moment-to-moment collection addicting and incredibly pleasurable.
(+) The levels are charming, with fun set pieces and novel premises and aesthetic variety.
(+) The background jokes, gags, and references give this a game a lot of humor and charm. I especially love Bongo-Vuvuzela and Stealy Wealy Automobiley, which are just genuinely hilarious.
(+) The pre-fabricated cutscenes have delightful squash-and-stretch Looney Tunes-esque animation, and it's always charming to watch.
(+) The collectible sensor is a really good feature that makes collection more accessible and less frustrating.
==The movement is floaty and awkward, but you quickly get used to it and it feels natural after an hour or so
(-) Ancient Stones need more variety. A lot of them are just laying around in pretty accessible locations you're bound to come across playing the game normally. They're rarely in interesting hiding places, and when you do have a "quest" to unlock one it's almost always some variation of finding the 4/5/10 Somethings to exchange for an Ancient Stone. These kinds of "objective"-based collectathons work in games like Ty the Tasmanian Tiger, Banjo-Kazooie, Yooka-Laylee, and Battle for Bikini Bottom because of the large variety of things you have to do to get them, but these lack that.
(-) The levels don't take their concepts far enough, often having interesting-seeming buildings and set-pieces that would've made for unique levels being entirely inaccessible, such as Cajun Mob Bog never taking you into the casino aside from the boss fight. You walk around the outside of what may have been really interesting and expansive levels, but you always feel like you're on the outside of a lot of potential for fun level design that isn't tapped into
(-) Boss fights are either uninteresting or outright obnoxiously unfun.
(-) Due to the lack of any narrative content to the worlds, and the lack of exploration into meaningful settings within the world, bosses feel random and disconnected from their levels.
(-) Significant lack of options, settings, accessibility features, and many essential features that's unforgivable for a modern game to be lacking, like camera sensitive and control mapping.
(-) A lot of technical issues, like objects being derendered randomly, jarring transitions with little easing-in or building-up, essential collectibles vanishing off the map, etc.
(-) Awkward controls, like having a separate button for gliding instead of just holding the jump button, the strictness and lack of communication of the Mario somersault jump, finnicky ledge-grabbing, awful swimming etc.