Developer: Evening Star
Publisher: Private Division
Price: Roughly £24.99/$29.99, different platforms and regions may vary on exact price.
Filesize: 2.75GB
Penny's Big Breakaway is a momentum based 3D Platformer developed by the team who was responsible for producing Sonic Mania; arguably one of the greatest Sonic games in the year 2000s.
There is a plot which involves Penny participating an audition to perform her showcase but her cosmic Yoyo had a mind of its own and destroyed Emperor Eddie's clothes to only show his boxers with hearts all over it. Furious at their actions, he sends in the penguin guards to arrest her and it's up to Penny to get away from them and outrun the law. The plot is straight-forward but the lore is expanded visually as props seen in the level themselves. What really sells the game is a mixture of good visual design and gameplay mechanics.
The visuals are very colourful and has likable character designs to the point you wanna shout "I can't believe it's not Sonic".
Despite the game being in 3D, the levels have a linear approach with some mini-detours along the way to enter secret areas/find hidden hexagons, this approach is best compared to say Super Mario Galaxy where there is very limited camera control, but not a major concern as it works well 95% of the time, the natural shots does a great job, it's only an issue if you had to backtrack to pick-up a missing item as Penny is running towards the camera. The worlds are diverse as it includes many themes including town, beach, lava, waterslide park, electric industry and a few others without spoiling the game.
Despite the game being in 3D, the levels have a linear approach with some mini-detours along the way to enter secret areas/find hidden hexagons, this approach is best compared to say Super Mario Galaxy where there is very limited camera control, but not a major concern as it works well 95% of the time, the natural shots does a great job, it's only an issue if you had to backtrack to pick-up a missing item as Penny is running towards the camera. The worlds are diverse as it includes many themes including town, beach, lava, waterslide park, electric industry and a few others without spoiling the game.
The gameplay side is where things get interesting, first of all you can play the game in different ways depending on your controller preference as it could be either: shoulder + trigger + twin sticks or use a single stick and four face buttons. For me I used the trigger to rev up Penny's dash, single stick to move and face buttons to use YOYO and jump actions. The former seems to be the intended method as it takes full advantage of twin directions so it's possible to move forward and fire Penny's yoyo the opposite direction at the same time. That said, the latter method is still playable, especially if you're used to executing action commands with just the face buttons.
As a 3D Platform game, Penny has a variety of moves in her arsenal with the majority being mobility based rather than combat. In the air she can shoot her Yoyo in a direction as a short ranged attack, her other aerial options are clearly mobility as she can either perform a flip to gain little height, freeze the Yoyo in the air to act as a swing or air dash, the air dash is a move that requires good spacing as there are moments where an air dash can overreach the platform you're trying to land on only to fall down into a bottomless pit. On the ground, she can perform the whirl-swing, a spinning attack that has some use besides combat, mainly cutting grass for money or rotating giant screws to solve puzzles. Each world has an unique identity by showcasing a combination of interactables for Penny to use along the way, whether it's the palm trees to act like a human catapult or temporary power-ups to help increase her attack power to destroy tougher blocks, a hot wheel power-up to allow her to traverse dangerous terrain for a longer period and a whirlwind yo-yo to act like a single use helicopter blade to gain vertical height only to descend slowly afterwards.
The money you find throughout the levels has 2 uses
- To increase your score combo multiplier by an extra +0.1
- Buying temporary power-ups from Extra HP to UFO pickup to give the player an easier time dealing with tougher levels.
Nearly every main level has 3 big items to pickup and 3 NPCs to help out. The former is to unlock bonus star levels that are only playable by spending with big hexagons, there's 15 of them to unlock which is nearly an extra 50% of the main story's traditional platforming stages. The latter are more varied as it involves completing a task for the NPC with a fair majority involve collecting items, defeating enemies or getting a high score combo in-between point A and point B. Some tasks have a time limit and running out of time can lead to failure. The toughest task request in my opinion is getting a high score combo as the points Penny can earn can either be really easy or really hard depending on execution and/or the layout of the level to help extend her combo. The reward for helping the NPCs is giving Penny a bigger bunker bonus score after completing the level, if the player gets a high enough score, they can unlock the bonus scrapbook image as a reward. These bunker bonuses are very vital if you want to get them all.
One interesting note as I was playing through this is the low enemy count. Unlike many other 3D platforming games, there's probably no regular level that has more than 10 killable enemies, though a fair majority of them have penguin guards that will try to catch Penny and take her away (along with losing 1HP). They're not as annoying as it sounds because they tend to patrol a certain area and are not fully persistent to chase you to the very end. She can shake them off easily by executing tricks.
Music is a section that is very well done, with the tracks composed by Tee Lopes and/or Sean Bialo, the melodies are mostly up beat with a high tempo. Town theme which is the first world even gets an act 2 style remix much later on in the game. The beach style track slows the tempo down to a soothing vibe, sadly that theme is only used for two levels. The bosses are intense to listen to, most notably Mr Q which you can listen to below.
The boss fights are puzzle based, whereas Sonic games usually involves spin jump attacking the enemy's body, this one takes advantage of using assets found in the level to exploit the bosses' weakspots. One boss battle for example is Mr Q where his gimmick starts off with the classic tennis rally sequence where you return the ball back to the sender but after that, you have to shoot one of his head orbs into a 1 of the 6 pool table holes. This sequence repeats itself 2 more times with a tougher rally sequence and more head orbs to put into the pool table along with extra traps to hinder the player's progress.
During my time playing the game, there were some gameplay issues that were fixed in a later update. The most notable fix is a boss where you have to race against your puppet clone, some parts of that level had some questionable respawn locations as once Penny fell into a void, there was a good chance she will respawn up in the air, giving the player little time to react before ending up losing another HP. Another bug involved fighting against the giant penguin boss where pausing the game during the super slo-mo just before/after getting a hit retained the effect, even after resetting the level and the only way to disable it was to go back to the level select screen and reselect that stage, I tried it again on the latest patch and that got fixed as well. This is what makes reviews tough as my experience can be considered to be outdated sometime in the future as newer players will be playing on the latest build... unless you are on PC and know a way to downpatch it.
Overall, the game is a mixture of easy to play yet hard to master at the same time. It's one of those games where a perfect run requires a lot of dedication like trying to pull off a massive score in just 1 combo when playing Tony Hawk games. I'd suggest that you should play this with sticks that doesn't suffer from drift issues as it can lead to unintentional problems when executing stick input for bunker bonuses and in other cases trying to keep the stick in neutral to allow her perform a peel out (think of it as Sonic trying to rev up a spin dash), just don't expect your first playthrough to be a breeze all of the time as some parts can be challenging.
Big Breakaway
Colourful visuals with great character designs
High Quality soundtrack
Surprisingly lengthy levels with the average being 8-10 minutes for a blind playthrough.
Movement looking slick if done correctly.
Big Yo-yo fraud.
Movement has a learning curve which is a nitpick negative as using the wrong type of jump follow-up can lead to doom.
No accessibility for landing prediction (jumps can be hard to judge where to land sometimes)
Limited camera controls, notably bad when backtracking.
Rating: B+
Review code provided by Private Division.
Platform: Steam
#AD added to the title to follow the UK rules by the ASA..
Platform: Steam
#AD added to the title to follow the UK rules by the ASA..
