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| Klonoa: Door to Phantomile A Playstation 3D Platformer reviewed on 8/7/2009 by Wesley Pollow. |
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"The Playstation never seemed to have any particularly great platformer games. I have no idea why. Maybe they didn’t have the right characters. Maybe it was hardware limitations. Who knows? Namco decided it was time to step up and put Crash Bandicoot to shame."
In Klonoa: Door to Pantomile, you take on the role of Klonoa. Klonoa is a cute furry puppy dog thing with huge ears, and a cool looking hat (with Pac-Man on it, no less). As you control Klonoa on a 2-D track, you utilize his jump, and “air bullet” to pick up enemies and throw them. The idea is to have Klonoa use the enemies in different ways. He can throw enemies into other enemies or objects, like a weapon, but he can also use them to enhance his jumping. It all sounds fairly simple, but using these abilities intelligently takes some practice. What sets aside Klonoa from other platformers is that it isn’t just a “Point A to Point B” path for each level. Despite the 2-D track keeping the character from free roaming 3-D play, Klonoa requires the player to use the depth of the levels. Various objectives will require you to toss items into the foreground or background. Paths also often times stem off from one location into different directions, so you still have to think in 3-D. Klonoa has a certain style that is kind of rare to see in an American release. The extremely cute anime style will probably throw off a lot of gamers, but the style is what makes this game so good to look at. The game is like a story book land, reminiscent of Nights into Dreams, or Yoshi’s Story. Without this artistic style, Klonoa would probably be just another boring platformer. On the other hand, the audio isn’t quite as good as the rest of the presentation. Mind you, none of it is awful, just none of it is really great either. Another surprising detail for such a traditional 2-D platformer is how cinematic Klonoa is. Klonoa features a lot of between level (and sometimes in level) cut scenes. Namco obviously felt the need to make absolutely sure the player would be drawn into the story book land. Although it isn’t translated, all of the cut scenes feature voice acting. This isn’t really that annoying or anything, because you can just read the dialogue. Unfortunately, sometimes this makes a game inaccessible to American gamers (especially younger ones). Aside from a few minor completes, there are not really any flaws here. The only negative thing I can say is that Klonoa is just too short. The difficulty level is throttled nicely through all of the levels, but this game will probably only take a seasoned gamer 3 or 4 sittings to complete. If you enjoy a decent platformer, and see this on ebay or something, do yourself a favor and pick it up. You’ll thank yourself.
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