Review: Ultimate Sackboy is a solid mobile platformer with typical free-to-play trappings
PlayStation Studios may now have its own mobile wing set to start adapting its IP to phone and tablet users, but that doesn’t mean it won’t still licence out its properties to third-party mobile developers.
Ultimate Sackboy, then, isn’t a PlayStation Studios title, but is instead the work of UK/Malta studio Exient, which already has previous experience working with Sony IP with its mobile take on Lemmings.
Long-time Sackboy devotees may be aware that there’s already a mobile game starring the cloth-eared chap, but whereas 2014’s Run Sackboy! Run! is a side-scrolling endless runner in the style of the LittleBigPlanet games. This is an over-the-shoulder effort more in line with Sackboy: A Big Adventure.
Rather than endless running, this time players take part in small stages lasting around 45-50 seconds each, and are tasked with two things – collecting as many coloured bubbles as they can, and surviving until the time runs out.
Once time’s up, the player’s points tally is calculated (different bubble colours are worth different scores) and they’re then placed on a leaderboard against a bunch of fictional players to see if they made it to the top.
The aim, then, is to score enough points during a run to at least make it to the top three of this leaderboard, with first place awarding the player a loot bag too. With a timer, naturally, because mobile.
The actual gameplay itself is enjoyable. The controls don’t reinvent the wheel – swipe sideways to move between three lanes, up to jump and down to slide – but they’re responsive enough to let you quickly perform last-second dodges.
Stages, as is the way with games like Sonic Dash, are procedurally generated using premade chunks, meaning over time, you’ll learn some of the patterns of
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