Sequel September 1 - Pitfall The Lost Expedition (GameCube)
As I've mentioned a couple of times on my page, September is going to be dedicated to sequels of games that I've reviewed on here the last six months since I started this blog. These aren't going to necessarily be firm sequels, but will be later games in the same series of games that have been featured on here already. These reviews will be done in the same formats, but I'll also be throwing in a little bit on how it compares to it's predecessor (if it's applicable in such a way).
Our first top for the month is Pitfall : The Lost Expidition for GameCube. It's a little over a decade old, and it's (as of writing this) the latest installment in the Pitfall series of games. It also sees the return of the original Pitfall Harry, as the last two installments (Mayan Adventure and Beyond the Jungle) featured his son, Pitfall Harry Jr. How does it stack up to the rest of the Pitfall games? Let's find out.
Overall they're pretty basic and easy controls. They're very functional in the game and there's no curveball commands that you need to worry about, everything is laid out beautifully for you. But let's see exactly how well they stand up in the game.
Once you crash into the jungle, the entire area is "accessible" to you right off the bat. What I mean by "accessible" is that this game is more open than linear. There are various areas you'll need to visit in the game on your quest to find the survivors and thwart St. Claire, but certain areas require a specific item for you to gain access. For instance there's an area you need to get to that it's path his covered by a giant spiderweb, and to get to it you must first get the torch so you can burn your way through. Apparently the spiderwebs are strong enough that you can't walk through them, but they lurch up in flames the moment you light them with the torch.
Other than the torch, you pick up a canteen, a slingshot, pick axes, TNT, a gasmask, a shield, a raft, and a handful of other things. They all have their place and purpose, some more often than others. Your best friend out of all of them, though, will be the canteen, as you can carry water from the healing fountains in it and heal yourself on the go. Everything else is used very sporadically, and mostly in very specific situations. Like the raft can only be used to slide down snowy hills and over frozen/electrified water, the gasmask can only be used to traverse through gaseous areas, and so on.
Your combat is primarily done with your fists, but you can use some of your items too, mostly before combat to stun your enemies to stun them. Most enemies can go down in just a couple of hits, but some require you to have a more powerful attack move to completely defeat them. The enemies feature from a wide range of categories. There's the villagers, some of which hide behind shields and others that hide in bushes and sneak up on you when you're not looking (a lot like Boo's in Super Mario), porcupines, St. Claire's men, and even penguins. Yes, you have to fight penguins, along with a number of other enemy types that would make this post go on forever if I listed them all. In addition to these enemies, there are your bosses that you face like the Jaguar from the beginning, some showdowns with St. Claire, and fights with some of the larger enemies you come across in the jungle.
The platforming itself is all the original Pitfall mechanics in new forms. You still get to jump to vines to swing over pits, and across crocodile backs to cross waterways. The pits themselves are pretty amusing, they open and close in the ground and have big teeth encircling their rims when they're open, and if you fall in the ground will literally eat you.
Currency takes the form of idols you can find all over the jungle. The ones you find in the wild are worth one, or if you free any explorers, they'll give you special idols that are worth five. You can then use the idols to purchase upgrades from Shaman Stores, where you can increase your health bars, your canteen carrying capacity, or special moves that can only be purchased from the Shaman. The rest of your upgrades are learned by locating the pages of the Heroic Handbook. The majority of these pages can be found by just playing the story, and when you'll find the necessary pages when they're needed.
Overall this is a pretty fun game in all it's platforming glory. But does it challenge the player, or are you able to coast right through it?
Platforming can be a moderate challenge in this one. The mechanics themselves are pretty easy, but it's using them where you'll run into issues, as they aren't perfect. There are a few instances where you'll think you're standing in a corner with nowhere else to go, only to find out that the place you were supposed to go to was practically hidden. In that respect, the game isn't very helpful, especially since they seem to give you more than one option of where to go only for you to try it and find out it's too far away and you humbly fall to your death. It would've been nice if, after a few deaths in a row in the same location, the game popped up with a message hinting at where to go.
Your enemies are fairly easy, although some can be a little more difficult than others. But for the most part, they're just minor annoyances that you can easily swat your way through. The most annoying can be the croc's that hide in mud pits. They wait until you are close enough and then spring out at you, and to avoid it you have to try and jump over their attack (until you learn the quick dash move), and the success rate of this is about 50%. There were times I thought I'd cleared the croc only to get eaten, and times I thought I was bound to be a snack but was free. The quick dash is much more efficient at avoiding these attacks though.
Lastly, the bosses. They're really easy. So easy, in fact, that I almost didn't split them into their won difficulty block. None of them really require a lot of strategy. As soon as you get an advantage over them, it's easy to mow them down. The first showdown against St. Claire, for example, features him on a raised platform lobbing bricks of TNT in your direction, and to defeat him you have to attack the beams for the platform with your slingshot. Once each beam is obliterated, it goes into a small cutscene and effectively resets St. Claire's AI, so if you get a quick enough jump on him when the action comes back, he won't get a chance to throw more than a couple of explosive bricks at you.
In the end, Lost Expedition isn't that much of a challenge. While it adds into it's elements with the combat feature, the main pull is still the platforming and that's the only real area of difficulty in this one. So let's look at the Pros and Cons of this game before I get to my Final Thought on it followed by discussing the improvements or shortfalls in comparison to it's predecessors.
- Original Games Hidden Inside. Once again, the original Pitfall has been coded into the game for your pleasure to play. Only this time, you don't need a special code to unlock it, it's placed as a mini-game in one of the villages.
- No Helping Hand. As I mentioned earlier in the review, the game doesn't chime in to help you if you end up getting stuck. Every area you get to has one clear path for getting through it. Sometimes, though, that one path isn't so clear. And if you have trouble finding it, the game has no issue sitting back and watching your health and life count drop.
You can find The Lost Expedition for around $10 or $12 on GameCube and Xbox, or about $6 for PS2, and either way you will end up with your money's worth.
Improvements?
Everything in this game is a huge improvement on the Pitfall series as a whole. Beyond the Jungle was the first one to bring this game out of the side-screen perspective, and Lost Expedition continues to improve on that formula. Unfortunately there hasn't been a new release in the Pitfall series since this one came out, but I eagerly await another great Pitfall game. The graphics are amazing, the voice acting is on point, there's really nothing that was left behind in bringing this classic series to a new generation of gaming.
Our first top for the month is Pitfall : The Lost Expidition for GameCube. It's a little over a decade old, and it's (as of writing this) the latest installment in the Pitfall series of games. It also sees the return of the original Pitfall Harry, as the last two installments (Mayan Adventure and Beyond the Jungle) featured his son, Pitfall Harry Jr. How does it stack up to the rest of the Pitfall games? Let's find out.
The Story
The Lost Expedition begins with Harry facing off against a demonic jaguar which he beats into defeat. Harry assumes he's won but the jaguar pounces back, pinning him down, and from here the game flashbacks to the day before. Harry is on a flight to South America talking with the passengers, among whom is an archaeologist, Dr. Bittenbinder and his associate Nicole. The plane gets struck by lightning and ends up crashing down into the jungle below. At first the story pits Harry running around trying to round up any and all of the survivors he can find, but eventually opens up into Harry facing off against his nemesis, Jonathon St. Claire and stopping him from claiming the lost city of El Dorado.The Controls
Pitfall : The Lost Expedition features traditional platforming controls. The joystick controls all your movement and the L and R buttons rotate the camera, with Z centering the camera behind you. A is used to jump and can be pressed again to double jump. B is your attack button, Y is used to crouch and makes you roll when used in combination with the joystick. X is your dash button (when you learn the move a little ways into the game). The D-Pad buttons select one of your items, which are then used in different ways with the C-stick. The C-stick is also used to pick up idols that you find in the jungle, and to climb up and down vines when you're hanging/swinging from them.Overall they're pretty basic and easy controls. They're very functional in the game and there's no curveball commands that you need to worry about, everything is laid out beautifully for you. But let's see exactly how well they stand up in the game.
The Gameplay
As with all the games in the Pitfall series, Lost Expedition is a platforming game, and for the second time in the series (the first being Beyond the Jungle) the game is from a 3rd person over-the-shoulder perspective. While the main focus of the game is the platforming, there is a smaller emphasis on combat in this one as well.Once you crash into the jungle, the entire area is "accessible" to you right off the bat. What I mean by "accessible" is that this game is more open than linear. There are various areas you'll need to visit in the game on your quest to find the survivors and thwart St. Claire, but certain areas require a specific item for you to gain access. For instance there's an area you need to get to that it's path his covered by a giant spiderweb, and to get to it you must first get the torch so you can burn your way through. Apparently the spiderwebs are strong enough that you can't walk through them, but they lurch up in flames the moment you light them with the torch.
Other than the torch, you pick up a canteen, a slingshot, pick axes, TNT, a gasmask, a shield, a raft, and a handful of other things. They all have their place and purpose, some more often than others. Your best friend out of all of them, though, will be the canteen, as you can carry water from the healing fountains in it and heal yourself on the go. Everything else is used very sporadically, and mostly in very specific situations. Like the raft can only be used to slide down snowy hills and over frozen/electrified water, the gasmask can only be used to traverse through gaseous areas, and so on.
Your combat is primarily done with your fists, but you can use some of your items too, mostly before combat to stun your enemies to stun them. Most enemies can go down in just a couple of hits, but some require you to have a more powerful attack move to completely defeat them. The enemies feature from a wide range of categories. There's the villagers, some of which hide behind shields and others that hide in bushes and sneak up on you when you're not looking (a lot like Boo's in Super Mario), porcupines, St. Claire's men, and even penguins. Yes, you have to fight penguins, along with a number of other enemy types that would make this post go on forever if I listed them all. In addition to these enemies, there are your bosses that you face like the Jaguar from the beginning, some showdowns with St. Claire, and fights with some of the larger enemies you come across in the jungle.
The platforming itself is all the original Pitfall mechanics in new forms. You still get to jump to vines to swing over pits, and across crocodile backs to cross waterways. The pits themselves are pretty amusing, they open and close in the ground and have big teeth encircling their rims when they're open, and if you fall in the ground will literally eat you.
Currency takes the form of idols you can find all over the jungle. The ones you find in the wild are worth one, or if you free any explorers, they'll give you special idols that are worth five. You can then use the idols to purchase upgrades from Shaman Stores, where you can increase your health bars, your canteen carrying capacity, or special moves that can only be purchased from the Shaman. The rest of your upgrades are learned by locating the pages of the Heroic Handbook. The majority of these pages can be found by just playing the story, and when you'll find the necessary pages when they're needed.
Overall this is a pretty fun game in all it's platforming glory. But does it challenge the player, or are you able to coast right through it?
The Challenge (or lack thereof?)
The Lost Expedition isn't a very difficult game, but it's not very easy either. You'll face a decent amount of challenges from the platforming to the enemies and bosses.Platforming can be a moderate challenge in this one. The mechanics themselves are pretty easy, but it's using them where you'll run into issues, as they aren't perfect. There are a few instances where you'll think you're standing in a corner with nowhere else to go, only to find out that the place you were supposed to go to was practically hidden. In that respect, the game isn't very helpful, especially since they seem to give you more than one option of where to go only for you to try it and find out it's too far away and you humbly fall to your death. It would've been nice if, after a few deaths in a row in the same location, the game popped up with a message hinting at where to go.
Your enemies are fairly easy, although some can be a little more difficult than others. But for the most part, they're just minor annoyances that you can easily swat your way through. The most annoying can be the croc's that hide in mud pits. They wait until you are close enough and then spring out at you, and to avoid it you have to try and jump over their attack (until you learn the quick dash move), and the success rate of this is about 50%. There were times I thought I'd cleared the croc only to get eaten, and times I thought I was bound to be a snack but was free. The quick dash is much more efficient at avoiding these attacks though.
Lastly, the bosses. They're really easy. So easy, in fact, that I almost didn't split them into their won difficulty block. None of them really require a lot of strategy. As soon as you get an advantage over them, it's easy to mow them down. The first showdown against St. Claire, for example, features him on a raised platform lobbing bricks of TNT in your direction, and to defeat him you have to attack the beams for the platform with your slingshot. Once each beam is obliterated, it goes into a small cutscene and effectively resets St. Claire's AI, so if you get a quick enough jump on him when the action comes back, he won't get a chance to throw more than a couple of explosive bricks at you.
In the end, Lost Expedition isn't that much of a challenge. While it adds into it's elements with the combat feature, the main pull is still the platforming and that's the only real area of difficulty in this one. So let's look at the Pros and Cons of this game before I get to my Final Thought on it followed by discussing the improvements or shortfalls in comparison to it's predecessors.
PROS
- Maintains Original Pitfall Feel. Even though it's not the same side-scrolling platformer it started out as, this Pitfall game makes sure you remember where it got it's roots. There's a whole bunch of new stuff like the fisticuffs combat and some of the items, but through it all you still get to swing from vines, jump on alligators to cross water, and swat off scorpions. It's nice seeing a game that's been around for so long but it still maintains some of its originality.- Original Games Hidden Inside. Once again, the original Pitfall has been coded into the game for your pleasure to play. Only this time, you don't need a special code to unlock it, it's placed as a mini-game in one of the villages.
CONS
- Harry's Personality. Bringing back the original Pitfall Harry, and giving him a voice, they decided to give him a little sass. The only issue is it's too much, and there really was no reason for it. First off he comes off as cocky just from having the experience of his past adventures. But on top of it, he comes off as a bit of a womanizing prick. The only reason he is so amped to find the other survivors is so he can get in with the Bittenbinder's assistant Nancy. It's amusing, but it's overdone and like I said he comes off as a prick because of it.- No Helping Hand. As I mentioned earlier in the review, the game doesn't chime in to help you if you end up getting stuck. Every area you get to has one clear path for getting through it. Sometimes, though, that one path isn't so clear. And if you have trouble finding it, the game has no issue sitting back and watching your health and life count drop.
Final Verdict
The series that is often credited with giving birth to the platforming genre delivers once again with The Lost Expedition. This game is such a blast, and even though there's a lot of changes from it's original Atari 2600 days, they're all for the better. The combat is great and the platforming feels new but still familiar. Even if you've never played a Pitfall before (and shame on you if you haven't) this one is a great platforming game in general.You can find The Lost Expedition for around $10 or $12 on GameCube and Xbox, or about $6 for PS2, and either way you will end up with your money's worth.
Improvements?
Everything in this game is a huge improvement on the Pitfall series as a whole. Beyond the Jungle was the first one to bring this game out of the side-screen perspective, and Lost Expedition continues to improve on that formula. Unfortunately there hasn't been a new release in the Pitfall series since this one came out, but I eagerly await another great Pitfall game. The graphics are amazing, the voice acting is on point, there's really nothing that was left behind in bringing this classic series to a new generation of gaming.
