Let's put our snowboards away from last week, and prepare to get our tongues a good workout instead. Actually, let's leave the tongue-work for the hero of our next game review: Big Hops! For anyone who is familiar with this blog and its writer, you know I love a good 3D platformer. Heck, I sometimes even love a bad 3D platformer. I'll take what I can get nowadays!
Fortunately, Big Hops is the former, and this review, based on the vanilla PlayStation 5 version, is ready to be read! Let's hop to it!
One giant leap for an indie developer, one big hop for frogkind.
The platformer, especially one in the 3D realm, is so difficult to nail. It doesn't matter if your game has incredible level design or the cutest platforming mascot around--if your game does not FEEL good to play, offer tight and responsive controls, then all of the clever design was for not. I've seen many games suffer this fate, and it's always a sad thing to think of "what might have been". Fortunately, Big Hops does not fall victim to this fate. Instead, it offers surprising fluid and fast platforming action, good feeling movement, and plenty of appreciate within its 8-12 hour runtime. While this frog certainly doesn't croak, does Big Hops offer enough of a "ribbiting" experience to stand as an indie darling and fondly thought of classic?
Big Hops begins with precocious young frog Hop hanging out with his little sister around their forest home. Hop yearns for adventure and getting out to see the world. He eventually stumbles upon a mysterious voice who turns out to be an ultimately annoying character named Diss, who grants Hop his request for adventure--whether our frog-tagonist likes it or not! In order to get home, Hop must venture through three unique biomes to find airship parts in each, all the while doing Diss' dirty work of acquiring otherworldly elements known as Dark Drips.
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| Every story starts somewhere, and in Big Hops, it's here at Hop's home, the forest. |
As the story progresses, the purpose as to why Diss wants these Dark Drips collected is revealed as the main overarching plot, while each of the three biomes delves into separate quests for Hop to collect each airship part. Really, some aspects of the story don't mesh well at all, and the inability to skip cutscenes completely when desired (instead, you have to mash a button to skip different dialogue individually) makes for its own headaches. That said, the dialogue itself, whether as part of the main plot or uttered by NPCs sprinkled about the game, is quite humorous at times, so it's worth listening to, all the same.
Big Hops isn't your standard 3D platformer. There's no direct combat to speak of, first of all, other than the two boss battles that appear through the duration of the game. Hop's only real enemy is the environment-- having Hop take damage from falling into pits, drowning, or getting hurt from fires, electricity, or thorns.
What Hop lacks in true enemies, he makes up for in mobility and maneuverability. This frog does have big hops in him, as well as a nifty kit of other platforming skills. From being able to climb walls (as long as his stamina gauge has energy in it), run along them, jump and dive on the ground to gain momentum, and most notably, use his tongue to engage with the environment in myriad ways, Hop has a small repertoire, but chaining these together results in some speedy and super impressive platforming feats.
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| If you ask, "what that tongue do?", the answer would be, "Quite a lot!" |
Hop's tongue, specifically, has a multitude of uses. It grants him the ability to interact with switches, buttons, and levers, asking of the player to pull away from them to flip them on or off. Like any tongue, it's also good for taste--eating food to replenish his health or stamina. Additionally, Hop's tongue is worthwhile for being able to grab onto floating red balls in the air, performing aerial acrobatics through swinging from them to cross chasms or reach new heights.
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| Ew! Hop, do you realize where that floating red ball might have been? How unsanitary! |
Perhaps the most interesting mechanic within Big Hops in theory is that of various veggies. Throughout the game, Hop comes across plants with growing veggies that upon being grabbed and thrown has unique results. The first introduction to this is in the tutorial forest level, offering mushrooms that can be used as springs to bounce Hop up to higher places. There are acorns that grow beanstalks that are climbable, cactus fruit that let loose tightropes used to cross chasms and many otherwise insurmountable gaps, and also bubble fruit that burst open to reveal bubbles that Hop can pull himself towards with his tongue, enveloping himself in it to reach new areas.
There are various veggie types found in Big Hops, and some have more utility than others. For instance, the red peppers are hardly good for anything than burning up tumbleweed blocks. While others, like the mobility and platforming-focused veggies, offer much more in the way of capability, especially to those who experiment. This opens up the potential for solving platforming puzzles and challenges in different ways. With this mechanic, in combination with Hop's previously mentioned platforming abilities, it brings some emergent gameplay to Big Hops.
The flow of Big Hops has you completing objectives across myriad environments and locales, furthering the story along. However, just following along with the story and completing the required tasks will make a given player miss a heck of a lot of the content within the game. It's very much worth scouring the game's multiple maps for special wares in the form of Dark Drips, the main collectible within the game, of which there are 100 total. These come in Super Mario 64 Power Star-styled goodies earned from completing platforming challenges in and out of the game's Super Mario Sunshine-like obstacle courses called Challenge Rooms, and assisting characters with their personal problems and dilemmas. You also earn Dark Drips from collecting enough smaller Drips scattered around the worlds that add up to form one big Dark Drip apiece.
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| Whether in standard (seen here) or small sizes, Dark Drips are a good idea to nab in Big Hops! |
Upon earning enough smaller Drips that a big piece is made, Hop can then find Diss in one of his many locations around the game in order to craft a new Trinket. These are equip-able patches that can be attached to Hop's backpack to grant various effects, from using up less stamina when climbing, allowing him more backpack space, granting Hop shop discounts or ways to earn more coins in general, to pinpointing the general direction of collectibles and points of interest to Hop's compass.
There is a fair amount of things to collect within Big Hops--the aforementioned Dark Drips, of course--but also things like bugs, mixtapes, flower petals, and outfits for Hop to become his inner frog fashionista. Unfortunately, one aspect that I don't exactly love about the game is that there is no broad or general collectible menu to see what worlds and areas in the game you have collected things in. Yes, there are collectible Trinkets that inform you of how many Dark Drips have been collected out of a certain amount, but you have to be physically within the area to see this info. With worlds containing up to a dozen different areas, you have to painstakingly visit each area across three worlds to determine which contains the last Dark Drip, missing mixtape, overlooked Challenge Room, etc. has not yet been found. Completionists will discover quickly how much of a genuine pain in the butt 100% completion in Big Hops truly is.
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| Nice and steady, Hop, within this particular tightrope-heavy Challenge Room. |
The unfortunate part here is that it was deliberately designed by the developer this way as to not create an overwhelming checklist for players, but I'd argue that the audience who plays a 3D platformer is one who aims for general completion or at least maximizing their enjoyment of collection. Thus, ironically, not including an in-game checklist is the thing that makes this game overwhelming in trying to blindly stumble upon missing collectibles!
My issues with Big Hops don't end there, unfortunately. While this has since been patched, my first playthrough on the PlayStation 5 version of the game started out well enough with stellar performance. However, as I went deeper into the game (let's say, after the first biome was completed), I encountered ungodly amounts of stuttering and hitching graphically, essentially resulting in noticeable and disruptive hitches every five seconds or less. Thankfully, this has been ironed out, but still happens, though at a drastically reduced rate--maybe once every minute or so, if even rarer.
To continue with the technical issues, clipping and falling through floors and environments happened more often than I'd like. Weird little presentation quirks, like Hop literally passing through the airship entrance and walking from out the other side as the screen transitioned to the loading screen, or hitches between areas being loaded, reminded me that this was a small dev and a budgeted effort.
Also, I found the tongue mechanic to be a bit clunky in execution to use. When two items or things of interest that can be latched or grabbed by Hop's tongue are in close proximity to each other, this can oftentimes result in the wrong thing being grabbed. While this is usually not a costly issue health-wise, it absolutely antagonizes when Hop is over a chasm, and instead of him latching onto a floating red ball to save himself, he inexplicably grabs onto something else (perhaps like something flying by in the air). Thus, the pit becomes Hop's new home.
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| Hop says, "I'm the captain, now. ...So... How do I get down from here?" |
Despite these niggling gripes and issues I found with the game, Big Hops delighted more often than its issues detracted from the experience. It delivers some clever puzzles, both platforming-based and environmental, some superb design in general, as well as both linear/focused levels and wide open areas of exploration to be found. Its vivid, vibrant art style and colorful cast (both visually and personality-wise) absolutely gave me plenty to look at and--in the case of the dialogue--laugh at, too.
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| Big Hops is one visually stunning game, where the draw distance is phenomenal! |
When it comes down to it, Big Hops nails the most important aspect of a 3D platformer--its movement is fast, fluid, fun, and feels right. Everything else is gravy, really, and while some of it fares better than other parts, overall, Hop's first adventure shows a stellar amount of understanding of what makes a modern 3D platformer enjoyable: with its remarkably tight controls, genuinely delightful level design, and mostly impressive presentation. If you're seeking out a new 3D platformer and don't know whether to try this one, my advice is to "hop" to it and simply do it.
[SPC Says: B-]
