Funk of Titans (PC) review "No Funking Good."

Funk of Titans is not a good game. It wasn’t a good game at the time of its console release earlier in the year, and it hasn’t magically become one while being ported to the PC without any improvements. You could say that the only remarkable thing about it is the fact it was ported to consoles first, with the obligatory PC version arriving as a distant second. And I will say precisely that, for want of any other semi-interesting things to say. With that out of the way, then, here comes the complaining.

Funk of Titans is a music-oriented platformer with a staggeringly small library of music, wherein Greek mythology is told to black up and Zeus suddenly becomes the father of Funk. His big issue is that three titans have dared tie themselves to different genres of music and have, I guess, taken over three hub worlds. I say "I guess" because their musical preferences don’t feature in any of these worlds, other than sometimes kind of showing up begrudgingly for a pathetically tame quick-time boss fight once you reach the end. Though you take on the three worlds of Pop, Rap and Rock, none of the corresponding regions represent their musical flavour at all. Each features the exact same mid-boss fight, rolling out generic backgrounds and sticking to the same pseudo-funk soundtrack religiously. You control Perseus, here sporting a yellow tracksuit and fluffy afro combo, in his quest for musical dominance. Well, "control" might not be the right word; wearing his mobile roots firmly on his sleeve, Perseus takes on the role of an ever-runner, limiting your input to jumping or slashing.

It would be unfair to suggest that no game has ever made good on these same simple foundations, but Funk of Titans does not number among them. Though precious few new obstacles are dropped into levels as you switch worlds (Rap introduces some scrolling platforms and Rock has levers you need to slash at to alter the landscape), the game’s stages suffer from minimal alterations and everything swirls together into one big blob of mediocrity. It’s all a bit strange. There are jump hazards and gaps all over the show, but the closest thing to enemies seem to be Spartan-like warriors who pay you little mind and never do anything more threatening than have a little dance. You have to slice them down anyway if you want to progress.

Various bonuses are offered if you work toward objectives while advancing through thee (mercifully short) stages. Golden records dot the landscape in the same fashion as Sonic's rings might, only you don't lose them should you happen to suffer a hit. Instead, you lose your first layer of clothing (a la Ghouls 'n Ghosts). There are three rewards you can secure, should you complete certain goals within each stage: you need to collect 100 records; you need to complete the stage while fully clothed; you have to have found the hidden Pegasus. In this case, Pegasus is a stick-horse toy attached to a rocket pack. He launches you into a surreal Flappy Bird-like bonus stage, where the game forgets both its Greek and musical themes and instead has you travel through landscapes filled with, er, cupcakes.



What do the rewards you earn grant you? Not a lot. Records can be used as currency to buy Perseus all manner of wacky outfit and weapon alterations, allowing him to run through stages wearing a storm trooper mask and wielding a corn cob for a sword. Therein lies Funk’s attempt at padding. You're asked to replay levels over and over so you can save up enough shiny obsolete media to earn pointless wacky cosmetic alterations. For the most part, these add-ons provide no in-game bonuses, but they do offer a new level of awful grind. Some stages, for instance, have Pegasus locked behind a special door which you need a specific weapon to unlock. An early stage needs you to be equipped with the (ho ho) traffic sign sword in order to free your wooden stallion, but you can’t unlock that trinket until you reach hero level nine. You gain hero levels by completing mundane chores offered up by Zeus, like jumping 25 times in a single level, or sliding down 200 metres of wall. That’s very mobile gaming of him, but by the time I cleared the campaign, I was a mere level seven. I wasn't about to keep replaying conquered levels just so I could buy a special sword to unlock a pointless mini-game.

There’s a general lack of care shown here for what is already a questionable game, and that doesn't serve the PC port well. No prominent mention is made that the game is a dressed up endless runner, and preview videos are presented so as to suggest that Funk of Titans is a normal platformer. As well, the developers haven’t bothered to enter the simple line of code that makes the mouse cursor vanish while the game itself is in motion. There’s nothing wrong with repurposing a mobile game in an attempt to find a new market on a fresh platform. Some mobile games flourish… but not this mobile game.

Staff review by Gary Hartley (August 02, 2015) Gary Hartley arbitrarily arrives, leaves a review for a game no one has heard of, then retreats to his 17th century castle in rural England to feed whatever lives in the moat and complain about you.