Awesome Pea Review

Awesome Pea is best described as a classic run/jump platformer, which you take play as a pea, and must work your way through a collection of bite-sized levels as you grab coins and jewels along the way. Don't let this simplistic concept fool you, because if anything, Awesome Pea is quite freaking tough. That's not to say that it's particularly good, because to be completely honest with you, it's one of the worst games that I've played this year so far. But let's go back and go at this from the top.

Starting up the game takes you to a clean and concise menu. Here, you can either go straight into the adventure or mess about with some of the game's settings. You're fully able to adjust the screen's border and filter, meaning that you're free to select whether you want that classic Game Boy-esque feeling, or not. I personally removed it for a nicer and clean look. That being said, Awesome Pea is still an eye burner at the best of times, no matter what visual layout you choose. With little else to do here, it's time to start greedy pea's journey.

The world map showcases several levels that are spread over a total of four islands. To be able to progress to the next level, you must complete the level that you're sat on. There's not much to keep on top of as far as the game's handling is concerned. Left and right movement, jumping, and double jumping, is the sum total of your move abouts. By using these commands, you'll bounce and weave through the game's fairly taxing stages, clearing large drops, avoiding many hazards, and outmanoeuvring enemy attacks at every turn.

Mercifully, the game's responsiveness is on point, but that's likely the only positive thing that I can say about it. Awesome Pea's depth is puddling deep, even for a game of this type. The game's levels tend to centre on a small band of designs; such as climbing a tower, going downwards through a cave, running on top of a train, and making your way through a bootleg Bowser's castle. Despite the fact that these levels vary as far as their core layouts are concerned, they recycle the aforementioned designs over, and over, and over again.

You're free to simply make it to the end of each level without picking up any of the treasure to proceed onto the next level, but the bulk of the game's achievements rest on full acquisition. The problem is that the game is as ugly as sin. There's no proper border between foreground and background, making it impossible to see many of the game's hazards. Several times I died due to not seeing what was coming at me, or where I was landing, due to the game's complete and utter lack of visual clarity.

Outside of that, spikes and death drops make up the bulk of the game's environmental hazards. There's no combat at all meaning that your only form of survival sits with good reflexes and an insane amount of patience. Because of how poorly designed the levels are, grouped with how hard is to see said hazards, you'll soon see yourself developing a major dislike to it. Don't mistake me completely; some levels are better presented than some others, such as the cave-based levels. The pitch-black background here removes issues with its lack of distinction, but even then, there's fault

So overall, the biggest challenge you'll face here is trying to overcome its presentation. There's a complete lack of a border between the game's foreground and its background, leading to wrongful deaths as a result not because of your skills but because of the art style and lack of understanding of what they were thinking when designing the levels. What's worse, there's almost no depth and variation within. Instead, the game makes a nasty habit of constantly recycling its few dull ideas, over and over, throughout the entirety of play. So this is my first review where I specifically suggest, avoid at all costs.