Kick and Fennick Review

A little boy with a big gun! Interesting sales pitch this one must have been for the Dutch development team.  You play as a small boy called Kick. For reasons unknown, Kick wakes up in a futurist world, alone and in a shattered buildings. Shortly after waking, Kick come’s across a robot named Fennick, who saves him from a menacing huge robot. Fennick has a broken energy core however, which Kick then sets off to pay his dues and find Fennick another one. They realise that the massive tower in the distance is where that energy core will be found, but that massive robot is never far behind. To succeed to escape him and find this energy core, Kick uses a massive sniper rifle that apart from being able to shoot things,  propels him great distances in one or two leaps when pointed behind.

There are also bounce pads, treadmills, magnets, teleporters and destructibility of your environment, collectables to find, for 45 levels to the games end.

Kick and Fennick started life as a PS Vita exclusive and has now worked it’s way to console, and it deserves its chance there. Discussions of how there are great games on the Vita aside for another, day, what makes Kick and Fennick a good game is it’s wholehearted originality.

Never before in gameplay have i had to use a flippin massive gun to throw me all over the place, but it works well and is great fun. It’s even more fun when you flip the gun around to shoot things too.

The controls were very responsive and simplistic to use which adds to the appeal. Having played this game on the Vita, and now on the PS4, it works better on the PS4 as you can see much clearer the trajectory of your leaps as designated by a white dotted line. Occasionally the white line is unclear when over a white background which should have been amended, but for the most part it’s clear.

The game overall is just a 2D puzzle platformer, with most of the gameplay just trying to figure out how to get from one end of the level to the other. Occasional shooting is mixed in but therein lies some of the problem of this game, that being, it’s just got one note, which as good as it is, gets boring after a while. I also feel like the unique gameplay wasn’t utilized as well as it could be with pretty average level design, and some levels required leaps of faith past the boundaries of what you could see on screen to a landing spot somewhere in the distance. Also early levels pretty much are just like the later ones.

The graphics, as to be expected for a converted PS Vita game, aren’t that spectacular, but are colourful, cheerful and work very smoothly. Audio also is again pretty basic with few effects and little music to keep you company.

In short it’s just shoot, bounce and get to the end of a level without too much thinking involved as you can not die either. Gratefully though this is a good thing as there is much trial and error in what leaps can and can’t be made.  
It’s also a shame the story that has a Journey like tone of “reach the tower in the distance” never really gets involved that much on an emotional level either. There is no voice acting, just a few short cut scenes to break up the gameplay every once in awhile.

This review was undertaken using a digital release code from Jaywalkers Interactive.