Fed up of being kidnapped and probed in indecent methods, the cows of Earth are rising as much as tackle the aliens. They’re Militant, Armed and Domesticated (the M.A.D. of the title, should you had been questioning), they usually’ve received a style for alien meat.
I’m a bit enthusiastic about this setup. It solely wants just a few sentences to grasp, and it instantly will get us rooting for the cows. Go get ‘em chaps. Sadly, it’s about probably the most noteworthy factor concerning the sport, which is much less MAD and extra mid. There’s nothing fallacious with M.A.D. Cows, however we’d battle to provide a lot of a listing of what’s proper with it both.
M.A.D. Cows is fifteen ranges of action-platforming, and we completed it in an hour on a Boxing Day morning. We are able to’t think about anybody who wouldn’t end it in hour in a single sitting, because it’s one of the unchallenging and friction-free experiences you could possibly presumably discover. There’s a constructive in there, after all: it doesn’t infuriate or outstay its welcome. However there’s a destructive there too, because it fails to mount a problem, supply a singular thought or keep within the reminiscence for longer than a Christmas cracker joke.
Every stage is a brief expertise the place the M.A.D. Cow is given an goal to finish. These targets fall into two buckets: kill a set sort of enemy, or accumulate a lot of animal friends. They find yourself being a lot the identical, as it’s worthwhile to kill the enemies to succeed in your mates, so it principally devolves to canvassing the whole thing of the extent till you might have amassed sufficient to tag the white flag on the finish of the extent.
M.A.D. Cows, like so many action-platformers earlier than it, loves some keys and locks. Or, in its case, colored levers and corresponding lasers. Wander right into a lever and it mechanically triggers, supplying you with entry to part of the extent that was lasered off beforehand. It’s about as complicated as a stage goes, gating you from one path by tucking a lever down one other path, and it’s as fantastic as it’s acquainted. We’ve performed roughly three-hundred video games that do the identical.
Enemies dot the extent, however they’re not precisely threatening. Most stride backwards and forwards, and can hearth at you in the event that they occur to be you on the time, so probably the most applicable response is to method them once they’re not trying. Pump them with lead, they usually’re down. Some enemies are a bit extra conscious and can flip and lock eyes with you as quickly as you seem (a UFO enemy being the prime instance), however – even then – they will solely hearth at you should you’re stage with them. So, firing from barely above or beneath means you’re protected.
Your biggest enemy will probably be your impatience. It was for us a minimum of. We received cocky and located ourselves sprinting via ranges, principally as a result of we might. However we’d get caught out by the sudden look of an enemy, significantly the massive ones who knock two hearts off slightly than the standard one. Really, we take that again: what killed us most was explosions. Whoever designed M.A.D. Cows should have a imply streak, as the exact same containers that maintain hearts are those that explode if you hit them. If we received a bit free with our aiming, we had been completely able to suiciding on an explosive life container. That received us greater than our impatience, though they’re carefully associated.
However all that occurs on dying is that you just reset to the beginning of the extent (we could have talked about that they’re quick) and it takes 5 minutes to return to the place you had been. So, it’s not a lot of a punishment, and you may proceed with breezing via the sport.
Upgrades or a development system of any sort would have added some spice, however M.A.D. Cows thinks that you just’ll be simply fantastic with a soar and a gun. It’s definitely greater than sufficient to finish the sport with: you’re not precisely underpowered. However we might have been up for a gradient the place the sport received more durable as we did. As an alternative, it opts for ranges which are microscopically more durable than the earlier ones.
Honest play, M.A.D. Cows does have a gun vendor robotic, so you possibly can spend the cash that you just stash from crates and strolling concerning the stage. A speedy shot, double shot and whacking nice RPG can be found for growing quantities of cash, they usually do add enjoyable. The simple-to-defeat enemies turn out to be much more so, as you mush them with the RPG, and there are chuckles available in obliterating any opposition earlier than they’ve even walked onto the display. However they’re not precisely serving to with the entire ‘when does this sport get tough?’ drawback.
In a means, M.A.D. Cows reminded us of these moments if you return to outdated areas in a platformer or roleplaying sport. You’ve achieved all of the aspect quests and gained weapons and coronary heart containers that make you vastly overpowered. The result’s that you just wipe the ground with enemies which may have as soon as challenged you. M.A.D. Cows looks like that from stage one to stage fifteen.
There wanted to be some concepts, some flare, to make this slimline and difficulty-free sport value taking part in. However M.A.D. Cows, exterior of its bovines-versus-aliens schtick, doesn’t deliver something that we haven’t seen numerous occasions earlier than. Certain, it performs properly sufficient and we didn’t encounter a single bug, however is that the brand new bar that we count on video games to clear? Can’t we count on a bit extra?
For a brainless hour or so, M.A.D. Cows may be value your £4.19. However you deserve higher. There are significantly better cuts of beef on the market.
