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pinchraccoon · 2 years ago

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Pinch Reviews: Spark The Electric Jester (1,2 and 3)

In an unusual fashion for me, I'm choosing to review the entire Spark series in one fell swoop. Somewhat recently I decided to play the entire series with my friend and cohost Space Buffoon. They proposed playing the series with me on stream as we're both fans of the Sonic The Hedgehog series, and Spark has very clear shared inspiration and DNA.

Over the course of three weeks, Buffy and I played the three titles in the Spark series, opting to play them in order. I'm choosing to cover the three of them today because I feel that comparing and contrasting the games to one another can shed some light on their strengths and weaknesses.

Spoilers, of course, for the entire Spark series!

Spark the Electric Jester, the first one, is a 2D platformer focused on speed and using powerups to creatively remove enemies from the optimal path. Notably, Spark differs immediately from Sonic while maintaining the core gameplay loop in that, far different to 2D Sonic's shield powerups, the powerups in Spark act much more like they might in a game like Mario, or like the different weapons in Mega Man.

The multiple different powerups in this game serve to further diversify an already diverse gameplay loop, finding alternate paths, by granting the player significantly different abilities and movement tech with which to maneuver through levels and carve out the path the player would most like to take. Whether it's removing specific enemies from blocking a path, or something as simple as an extended jump, the powerups allow players to express themselves really effectively. The powerups are also complimented by the stage design itself, which gives all the powerups that they contain a time to shine within them, and occasionally rewarding creative exploration with different, rarer powerups as well.

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Every level in Spark is really satisfying to complete, and despite being longer than the typical level within the genre, it's rare to become bored with the levels as their visual themes as well as the gameplay gimmicks and powerup swaps keep them interesting. The levels are also a phenomenal example of this game's lovely visual style. It's this charming pixel art that really grants a lot of character to the world, it's locales and it's people.

The story in Spark the Electric Jester is a fun, simple romp that calls upon a cute cast of side characters and recurring villains, although I would have liked if the Shadow the Hedgehog-esque "Fark" or "Fake Spark" were better executed in the main game. Otherwise though, Spark has some really clever and somewhat self-aware writing that knows what this game is and what it's trying to be. Spark wisely doesn't seek to do more than it's earned in this game, and I applaud it for knowing its limits. Also, I really like Spark as a character, particularly his grounded nature and apathy toward the situation at hand. He's a good person, but at the end of the day the guy really just want to pay rent more than anything else. His presence in the story makes for a really fun juxtaposition to some of the more serious elements that it tries to pull, and grounds the story through him.

Really the issues I had with the game were incredibly small, primarily that the final boss felt extremely underwhelming due to the unique "Super Spark" powerup that the player is given feels supremely underwhelming, and being able to die far easier in that fight kinda kills the tension of what could otherwise be a really cool moment. I wish to stress, though, that my issues with this game are minute, almost inconsequential, even, and I only feel a need to bring up my issues with what is otherwise an extremely solid and consistent title because I had a great time with the game and just wish it was *that* much more improved. It is very close to being a game I could call a modern classic, but something like the final boss and other, very minor quirks do stick out to me because I *want* this game to be excellent. As it stands though, it's a really great experience that I would absolutely recommend.

Spark The Electric Jester 2 brings the series in a bold, new direction compared to its predecessor, which is to say, Spark is fully Not in the game. Also it's in 3D now.

Spark The Electric Jester 2, or as I'm choosing to call it because I'm spiteful, Fark2, is a 3D platformer with some of the same combat elements as the first game, but with the notable change, of course, of being a 3D game.

I won't beat around the bush here, I don't think this game is very good whatsoever. There is genuinely nothing notable that I liked about my time with this game. Because I will surely go off on tangents about every minute instance of failure on which this game underperforms, I have opted to segment this part of the review, so as to maintain concision, and make my point as clearly as possible. I am going to discuss Fark2's gameplay, story, and presentation separately from one another.

Gameplay

Fark2 controls about how you would expect it to, you have a fast character who has a homing attack now, attacks that can help deal with enemies that cannot be dealt with by the homing attack, as well as a parry. Similarly to the previous game, Fark also has access to his own powerups, but not even close to the same amount as Spark had. Additionally, Fark has access to a few "special" moves that can be performed by holding a button and then pressing an alternate input.

With this core kit in mind, the tools given to the player would imply that the usage of all of the items within Fark's arsenal would be used, much like how Spark 1 heavily encouraged and featured the varied use of abilities and powerups to reach the end of a varied and interesting level. This implication, however, is wrong. In reality, very little of the kit given to you actually does end up being used, as the most effective tactics available could not possibly be simpler. I mean it without a shred of irony that every challenge that this game poses to you, outside of a boss fight, can be trivialized by simply running and jumping. This is because Fark is genuinely too fast for the levels, and the amount of space that he covers means that enemies, many jumps, and in some cases major portions of levels can just be ignored. By just running and jumping with the occasional homing attack, players can ignore 90% of Fark's auxiliary kit, including the special moves, the parry, and perhaps most damning, the powerups.

Levels in this game are often very open, and enemies do not populate enough of the space within the levels to actually be able to pose a threat to a player who is, literally, just running and jumping. Normally, I don't have an issue with level design that allows and encourages the player to speed through the level and even in some cases ignore mechanics for the sake of that speed, but I want to emphasize that this is The Entire Game that is like this. It almost feels as though, combined with the extremely generous health system, Fark2 makes genuinely no effort to actually try to kill the player, or worse, makes no effort to make the player adapt. The player creativity that was present in the first game is completely gone in this game, thanks in large part to the fact that the most effective tactic available is also the easiest tactic available.

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A quote from Soren Johnson and Sid Meier, creators of the Civilization series, comes to mind, and I feel that this quote and the information that it presents can aptly highlight the issues present within this game's gameplay loop.

"Given the opportunity, players will optimize the fun out of a game; One of the responsibilities of designers is to protect the player from themselves."

I find this quote to be particularly important in discussion of this because, well, the devs are blatantly not attempting to challenge the player enough to encourage them to engage with anything other than what works immediately, and the result it an uninteresting slog through a collection of straightaways with nothing of interest to break them up.

This game is not entirely a platformer, however. This game has a combat system and it would just *love it* if you were to engage with it, so it does throw you into several combat scenarios with bosses so as to not waste the effort made to animate punches and kicks. Unfortunately, while it is an instance in which the player has to do *something* other than run and jump, every boss encounter can also be trivialized, this time by spamming the attack button mercilessly until the opponent falls to the ground in about 45 seconds. Now, I played the game on normal difficulty, and I don't always think that games should be super super hard all the time, but I do think that a boss encounter of a kind shouldn't go down in 45 seconds in a third person action game-style combat system on the baseline difficulty of the game. Because of how absolutely spineless the bosses themselves are, they feel pointless and kinda pathetic, really.

To conclude the section on gameplay; Fark2 does not make enough of an effort to actually make the player use any of their advanced tools, regardless of how success within the game is defined. Because of this lack of interest in making a player engage with the game, the game is boring and feels meaningless to play.

2. Story

Fark2's story fails to captivate, or even begin to intrigue me for a multitude of reasons, not the least of which being that I find Fark, the middling "edgy version of the MC" from the last game not particularly interesting or compelling. Fark2 doesn't actually do much with any of its story beats, and creates countless plot hooks that are never resolved, such is the case with the majority of the game's bosses, Float, Flint and Double, all of whom the player learns next to nothing about except that they're working with a somehow edgier clone of Fark named E.J. and that makes them bad, because of course it does.

The story culminates in a predictable and uninteresting "I was created by the enemy" notion, the likes of which we've seen countless times, notably, in the series' influence. I am not kidding when I say it, Shadow the Hedgehog (2005) does Fark2's core story better than Fark2 does.

Of course, a lot of games have predictable, or otherwise simple larger plots that are saved by good or writing that has a lot of character, so does Fark2 have that?

Absolutely not, not even a little. Get a look at this line, to see what I'm talking about.

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The overly edgy, completely ironic way that this game plays itself is not only annoying to try to make sense of, but also refuses to go all the way with it. Every character comes off as edgy, but not edgy enough to where I can even begin to see the cheesiness that they're going for. After a certain point you begin to just tune out as secondhand embarrassment begins to set in.

The writing style that was so endearing about the few instances in the first game where dialogue would happen, particularly the tongue-in-cheek tone, is completely missing from this game, and comparing the two's writing styles to one another feels like night and day. It's dissonant to play these games one after the other, as they feel completely unrecognizable from one another.

It's so obvious that the writers want you to like Fark really badly, but they don't give him anything to latch on to as a character to actually make him likable. Comparisons between Spark and Fark as protagonists are unavoidable, but the most notable point in which the two diverge where Spark succeeds and Fark doesn't is that Fark fails to provide almost any input into the story itself, getting pointed in countless different directions for one reason or another, or for no reason at all. Fark feels like an engine to move through a story that he both is and isn't the center of, whereas Spark feels intentionally disconnected to events at hand because he doesn't particularly care about them.

Speaking of Spark, where is he? They mention him once as "being off enjoying a blank check" but that begs the question, why didn't they name the game "Fark the Electric Jester?" It's just supremely weird to me that in a game named after a specific character, that character has actually NO on screen presence. In some way, it feels like false advertising. And, considering that the devs are billing it as the *same series* the writing inconsistencies seem even more dissonant. If this were a spin off I would get it but it's not! Why is it named after a character who isn't in the game? This is like if the next Shantae game was called Shantae: The Curse of Driftwood, and then the game has no appearance of Shantae herself, and you're locked into playing as Rottytops.

The story of Fark2 fails on so many fundamental levels that I can't say that it's worth it to watch any of the cutscenes. It suffers issues on several fronts, from unsatisfying conclusions, plot contrivances, pointless characters, an attempt at intrigue that fails spectacularly, and a protagonist who is extremely easy to dislike.

There's one thing I didn't hate about this game's story, and that's that it does do the super form better than the first game did, but only because it wore a sickening amount of Dragon Ball on its sleeves.

3. Presentation

First, to get this out of the way, this game has some fun butt rock songs to play in boss fights, despite how lame those fights themselves are. I appreciate the attempt there, but music choice in this game is really quite odd.

There's no way I can put it politely, this game is not satisfying to look at. The textures are passable at best, the area design is really quite same-y and the model work for many characters is butt ugly. The two former problems I can pass, they're still problems, but I feel that the issue of the models cannot be as easily forgotten.

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The way that these characters are executed in 3D is, disappointing to say the least, exacerbated by the fact that are that you see *in game* has every one of these characters looking far better than they do here! I'm consistently left confused about what happened here to make all of these characters look like they have all of their features stickered onto their face, which is genuinely just a sphere.

I genuinely like all of these character designs! I think that everyone here looks cute or cool in some degree, but to have such an uncanny representation of them in-game does a legitimate disservice to these characters. I know 3D modelling is hard, I get it, but there should be a point, I feel, where a product isn't ready to be implemented into a build of the game, and none of the models of these characters were ready yet.

In Conclusion about Fark2:

Fark2 fails at just about everything it sets out to do, it's largely uncool, uninteresting, boring, and I don't feel that it is worth your time, and especially not your money. It's gameplay, story and presentation aren't anything special, and it isn't even "so bad it's good." This game is painfully mediocre, and I would believe it if this game were something of a demo for the following entry in the series. Clearly, someone felt that this game is as pointless as I feel it is, because every one of its levels were used as late game extra content in Spark the Electric Jester 3.

Spark The Electric Jester 3 is another 3D platformer, but makes significant improvements to everything that Fark2 tries to accomplish.

First and foremost, Spark the Electric Jester 3 manages to provide fast-paced, fun core gameplay that actually necessitates challenge to the player in both combat and platforming sections. Spark, as the rightful playable character in this game, has access to a large arsenal of combat and movement abilities, which are unlocked from an ingame shop, which serves to naturally encourage the player to learn each move as they can afford it. Spark can also double jump, as well as charge a dash forward that can be used in midair. Despite there not being much more than there was in Fark2 from a platforming perspective, the platforming of this game is far more satisfying as the levels themselves are actually made with Spark's movement and abilities in mind. Levels will frequently push back against you, and require that you at least manage a degree of skill to succeed.

On the combat of things, everything has been revamped to allow combat encounters to feel like anything more than a spam fest. In Spark3, players are encouraged to earn stunlocks against opponents in order to maximize the amount of damage that they can pull off off of one option. Additionally, use of the parry is more difficult, but no less required, making each combat encounter with lots of enemies into a test to see if the player can manage their combo strings while avoiding or parrying enemy attacks simultaneously. Again, compared to some of the action games that this gameplay loop is commonly accredited to, it's a bit more barebones still, however as it isn't the whole focus of the title, and the sections where the pure combat sections are used are somewhat far between, the combat doesn't get old and remains a welcome refresher when platforming could risk getting monotonous.

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Spark3 sees the return of powerups, again, however the player doesn't actually get many of them at all in a normal intended playthrough, really only getting maybe one of them for certain. I got to play with the Reaper powerup during my playthrough as I managed to defeat a certain boss who was supposed to beat me on my first attempt on him, and I think that this is a really interesting way to handle the powerups. Each powerup has much of the same fundamental kit, so players are never left wondering how to input something compared to Spark's normal moveset. I found this powerup implementation to be rewarding, but I felt myself wanting more upgrades to unlock in more apparent ways throughout one playthrough.

Level design in Spark 3 is extremely varied, and consistently visually and mechanically engaging the whole way through! This game works on the basis of certain "worlds" that unlock as the player progresses, sorta like how more rooms of Peach's castle will open at certain amounts of stars in Super Mario 64. Each level within these "worlds" are themed around a specific concept, like a city in a state of riot, an airport/rocket launch facility, or a militarized jungle. The theming of these areas doesn't just account for visuals, however, as each of the areas themselves are also considered for what could be interesting gameplay-wise. For example, one level in the airport level sees a plane crashing and Spark having to escape, in a rare timed level with strong wind mechanics attempting to throw the player off. Or, in the rioting city level, players can jump off of crowds of protestors for a boost, and use a helicopter in brief, but consistently solid vehicle sections. Speaking of, I adore the car sections. Spark3 starts in a car section and I adored every second of it. It's a thunderous, no-nonsense beginning to the game that served to really effectively set a tone that had me down for anything as soon as it started.

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Despite being "down for anything" Spark 3 does lose me in one area. I don't think that it's story is very good, really. My primary issues with the story are that, despite far better writing, this game fails to actually deliver on any of the hooks that it puts out, and seems far more interested, for some fuckin reason, on fleshing out characters from Fark2, specifically the main bosses from Fark2, at least two of which are presumed dead at the end of that game. While there is *a degree* of plot relevance that there could be, in that Float, one of the presumed dead bosses from the previous game, appears to have returned, and seems sad about having dead friends. I take issue with the notion of how this is done however, because Float doesn't actually tell Spark anything, and instead this information is exhibited through stylized 16 bit cutscenes, which while looking cool, take up significantly more runtime in the story than is necessary, especially considering how this story ends.

My BIGGEST issue with Spark3's story is its *egregious* ending, which I will warn prospective players about spoilers for if they're averse to that sort of thing, BUT the rest of this paragraph will concern these spoilers. Spark3 ends in a way that couldn't have been seen from three feet ahead of you. Spark3's ending is, no joke, comparable to NieR Automata and Neon Genesis Evangelion. There's nothing wrong with an ending like that art has, I quite like endings like that, but mostly because art like NieR or NGE EARN their endings, by laying consistent plot threads the whole runtime about something mysterious. Spark3 does *not* do this, and instead pulls it out as shockingly as possible. The entire game is predicated on "Spark has to go and remove Fark, who has become something of a dictator, from power, as he's militarized most of the world using the Fark Force." Now, this is a novel concept, cute even! I really hate Fark, so I'm down to bring him down a peg! But upon reaching the end of the game Spark reaches Fark, who doesn't want to fight him, and instead explains to Spark that both of them have been in a simulation for 3000 years, and Float, a character who's past we learned a lot about in this game, was actually a fake created by the simulation arbitrator, Clarity, in order to lure Spark toward it's own goals. Notably, there have been ABSOLUTELY NO notable clues that the world was a simulation. Additionally, in a near final boss moment, they make you play as Fark, which pissed me off personally, but that's not empirical it's just something I didn't like. The issue with Spark3's story is that it spends five hours of runtime satisfied in the status quo of it's normality, while it attempts to end with something that would have been far more effective, and far less jarring if there were ANY foreshadowing AT ALL. Because Spark3 doesn't have an interest in actually encouraging the player to think about how the game outside of the typical "big simple punch off" fare, it doesn't work to implement something as left field as the ending that is in the game. Additionally, the game ends on a discussion between Fark and Spark, who are dead, and have been dead, about the importance of keeping moving forward, really played pretty straight, no jokes, no irony, then immediately after the credits roll is a Friday Night Funkin reference. Tonal inconsistency is *so* rampant throughout this ending.

The ending, regardless of if you did or did not read the previous paragraph, left me so dissatisfied with the game that my opinion on this game soured significantly, to the point where on stream I actively did not recommend the game to viewers because of the ending.

To conclude, Spark3 is a game with a really excellent gameplay loop that doesn't leave a lot to be desired, and consistently seeks to challenge the player while also giving them opportunities to experiment with new and fun toys that consistently spice up the gameplay loop whenever present. Despite the quality of the gameplay, this game's story is not only unfulfilling, but also useless within the context of the game itself. There are two cutscenes that matter, and they're the ones before and after the final bosses. I would recommend Spark3 to someone looking for an exemplary gameplay experience, however I wouldn't begin to recommend the game to someone who wants a deep or interesting story.

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Now that I've discussed each game at length, I'd like to conclude with a short review of the series as a whole. S

park, when the direction accounts for potential shortcomings, is extremely fun, however the series' writing is consistently passable at best, with some egregious exceptions that make it hard to not skip every cutscene after a while.

Spark 1 is a really fun and interesting romp through a variety of interesting levels in 2d, with an overall fun atmosphere that doesn't seek to take itself too seriously, much to it's benefit. Complete with a multitude of gameplay styles and extreme encouragement of player creativity, it's an excellent way to satisfy a 2D speed platformer itch.

Fark 2 is awful.

Spark 3 takes consistent points from Spark 1 regarding player creativity, visual diversity, wealth of content, and attention to fun and engaging experiences that makes it easy to recommend for it's gameplay and visuals. However, the game's story takes itself far more seriously than it earns, much like Fark2 did to no avail, and the story becomes worse because of it.

If you'd like to watch these playthroughs for yourself, they're all up on my YouTube channel linked below! Thanks so much for reading!

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