Welcome to Pages of Fun!

Stylistically, The Messenger has a lot going for it: masterfully rendered pixel graphics and a rich chip-tune soundtrack. Come to think of it, that describes just about every “indie” game that is released these days. Unfortunately that’s not enough for me.

My biggest gripe with the game is that is based around an annoying mechanic in which you can double jump after successfully landing an attack. My thumbs were not designed for that twisting motion. I was constantly failing because I would simply miss buttons and success only came with random button mashing.

The first section of the game makes you think that this is simply a Super Meatboy collection of challenge levels, but just when I thought I was done, the game opens up and becomes yet another Metroidvania. Seriously, stop it with the Metroidvanias. Anyhow, you know it’s a bad sign when a game reveals that there are going to be hours more playtime and challenges but your reaction is disappointment.

I played the original American McGee’s Alice back in the early 2000s when I was easily impressed by just about any 3-D game. It was probably a $5 bargain-bin CD-ROM from CompUSA, and I managed to finish it even though it was pretty bad.

This sequel is definitely much slicker looking, but beneath the goth-girl art direction it’s still a fairly uninspired platform game. The biggest problem is straightforward and boring level design. For example, you are given the ability to shrink down, but you never use this ability for anything except walking into secret keyhole rooms. This is the sort of mechanism that a Mario game would build an entire world around.

And then there’s the combat, which consists of locking on to a target and mashing the left mouse button. Half the time the camera is positioned in such a way that you can’t see what you are doing anyway. There are a couple of larger enemies that offer a little skill-based battling, but most of the time combat is just an annoyance.

The game really wants you to care about its story, but it’s just an incoherent, mumbled mess of found “memories” and illustrated cut scenes. In the end, the whole affair feels like a Psychonauts rip-off, and, in hindsight, that game wasn’t really that great either.