War of the Worlds came out of nowhere for me, but it looked promising and was made by the guys who produced the surprisingly good retro-themed game Dark Void Zero (surprisingly good because it was better than the main game on which it was based Dark Void). Plus it’s narrated by Patrick freakin’ Stewart!

 

The 2D game starts off strongly with a tripod chase scene reminiscent of the ultimate runner game Canabalt, complete with buildings collapsing as you’re running over them. Everything has a classic look to it and yet is similar to the black and white aesthetic of Limbo, except for some sparingly used colors applied to the main character and enemy fire. The parallax backgrounds are fantastic and really give a good sense of old London.

What's really striking is the rotoscoped animation of the main character that lends a feel of being hand-crafted. It's something that isn't done that often and really fits in with the old classic look--the 1890's, not Geometry Wars--of the game. However, you have to wait the player’s animation when switching directions as it takes precedent over moving. This delay adds difficulty, and some frustration, later on in tighter areas.

 

The narration is incorporated well into the game to advance the plot and add gameplay hints, though I wish the developers at Other Ocean made greater use of the narrator for hints to eliminate the loading screen "tool tips." At times it seems obvious that Patrick Stewart should be saying something, but maybe there's only so much budget to make it so in a XBLA game.

Eventually, the honeymoon's over right around the time of a gas mask puzzle that barely makes sense. Admittedly, if it wasn't for the Internet, I may have been stuck at that puzzle for years like as if it were Bald Bull's bull charge in Mike Tyson's Punch-Out all over again (spoiler: punch his gut). At least this happens well into the game and not in the early going-on. After this puzzle, the world loses its Limbo-look by gaining colour, platforming becomes tight and sometimes frustrating, and Patrick Stewart goes off on an extended coffee break.

 

Bugs also diminished my outlook on the game, and they weren’t the alien kind. For one, the axe sound effect seemed to change volume throughout the game. More annoyingly, once I died in a fall during a checkpoint, only to respawn falling to my death again and again. I almost had to start again from the beginning of the level later due to being placed in electricity, but fortunately I could step to the right as the screen faded in. My last main bug complaint was being proclaimed dead when I was still running around intact - not like a headless chicken, this is an E10+ affair. The game had deduced I was hit enough to send me back to a checkpoint but didn't bother to show the death animation.

One unique and memorable area during near the end of the game was traversing through the red weed: an alien plant that grows in real-time to snag you but stiffens and dies in light. The effect looked really good when the plant is growing along with the physics once it latches on. Unfortunately, when you manipulate light to kill it in various puzzles, the plant bulges to an equal width and loses its realism. I appreciated being able to use the axe to chop away at the plant but at this point, much of the platforming started to remind me of the memorization and learning by death that was Dragon's Lair on Coleco Adam.

The game picks up again right at the very end in the last level, but perhaps too little, too late. And at least those sentries with the really long necks that always get axed provided the same sense of dread as the movies do, even if I didn't have to provide the same amount of axe. Ultimately, once I saw the credits rolling, I felt more of a sense of relief than accomplishment. There were some really good ideas and moments in the game, but the frustrating ones will keep me from wanting to go back anytime soon.