Funk of Titans

Editor's Notes

Digital version reviewed for the Xbox One.

Introduction

'Funk of Titans' was developed by Spanish indie studio A Crowd of Monsters. It is a platformer combining the aesthetics of funk and 70s-style disco with Greek mythology. The player takes control of the demigod Perseus, here portrayed with an afro and smart yellow tracksuit, as he runs, jumps, climbs, and bounces through levels to collect vinyl records and battle Titans to establish funk as the premiere music of Olympus.

The Game Itself: Our Reviewer's Take

'Funk of Titans' is a bit different from other platformers in that player control of the main character is limited. Perseus is always running forward at a set speed, and I could not slow down, speed up, or stop him, unless I placed him in front of an obstacle. This gives it a kind of "on rails" feel that took some getting used to - at first I thought the thumbstick on my controller was stuck. Outside of the running levels there are a few minigames. Perseus occasionally battles bosses with simplistic, repetitive quick-time events, and can ride Pegasus (a flying stick horse) in bonus levels.

Perseus doesn’t travel quite as fast as Sonic, but he zips along at a good pace. Gold vinyl records serve as both the score mechanism and to highlight the path (think gold coins), and collecting all 100 of them on a level rewarded me with...another gold record. Enemies must be dealt with along the way, either by jumping on or attacking them. Some obstacles are dangerous, such as fire and spiked pits. Taking damage from any source results in Perseus losing all of his clothes, and taking a second hit ends the level and abandons all progress. There are no checkpoint restarts. Each level is only a minute or two in length, so lost progress isn’t crippling, but the shoddy controls and frustrating clipping issues can result in frequent consecutive game overs.

There is a hint of latency in the controls, which is a big issue in such a timing-related game. Because Perseus runs forward autonomously and only has two buttons to control his movements (jump and attack), the game can come off as one big quick-time event. Like any quick-time event, timing is key - miss a jump and Perseus falls down a pit or lands in a fire; miss an attack and he collides with an enemy. I was soon conditioned to hit buttons slightly sooner than would be expected to avoid death. The platforming levels gradually introduce new features, like sliding, wall jumping, and swinging, but the luster fades near the end of the first map, leaving little fresh content in the second and third maps. The levels all seem to feel the same after that point.

The platforming isn’t strong, but it is significantly better than the boss battles or Pegasus bonus levels. The boss battles, either with generic Grunts or a trio of Titans representing the pop, rap, and rock music genres, are a series of button presses without any fun to be had. The bonus levels are frustrating and most of them end in just a few seconds, as Pegasus is too unwieldy to control. Their only purpose is to award the player with more records, which are used to buy different equipment in the in-game store. The store is one of the few highlights, not for its shopping, but for the sassy pop culture references in the item descriptions.