Ethan is a rat that can use his unique ability to freeze time to move items around, helping to solve puzzles in this puzzle/platform game.
General Gameplay
The general gameplay is that you go from level to level using the “freeze” ability to help solve platforming puzzles; the catch is that you have to get the freeze ability by collecting the freeze icons before using the feature. The game features 3 locations with a total of 50 levels.
Audio
Ethan: Meteor Hunter has a more of an urban/tribal type of background music, as well as basic sound effects. The game does not support surround sound, but it is not needed for this game as the 2.0 stereo sound is fine. The game’s audio is well done for gamers in your gaming family who use a headset. Parents, please take caution with extended use of a headset for your family gaming members.
Visuals
Ethan: Meteor Hunter’s graphics are done in a muted color set for the characters as well the background. The colors are easily be seen, but there were some parts of the game in which the colors were not as vivid as the rest of the game. There is no colorblind mode, but with the colors in more of the neutral tones, there is no need for one. One of the many concerns is the character animation of deaths; during our playtest, it was a little disturbing to see the ways in which the main character would be killed off. The game is rated E – 10, but we felt the death animations were more in line of a rating of T – For Teen. Parents please be aware of this as you allow younger gamers to play the game.
Controls
With fast paced action/platformers, having precise controls is key, and Ethan: Meteor Hunter fell a bit short of our expectations based on other platformer games. Many times during playtesting, our testers said that it felt that the controls were “off”, which resulted in a lot of unnecessary deaths or failed attempts. In attempt to make sure it was not our controllers’ issues on our end, we tried different controllers and also adjusting the controller settings, but we repeatedly found that the concerns were within the game. In our special needs gaming test, this proved to be a challenge, as the controller was not at times responding to our play testers inputs. This caused a lot of frustration for our testers and we had to end the special needs testing because of this. Parents, please take extra caution when allowing your gamer with special needs play the game because of the controller input issues. One good thing about Ethan: Meteor Hunter is that the game does have a very easy button layout for the game, but at the end of all the playtesting, the game’s controls were one of its downfalls. The game does not need any special controller to be used for the game, but parents, do be aware that the game’s inherent control settings may be off for some gamers when playing the game.
“Ethan: Meteor Hunter has some unique puzzles, however with bad platforming and off-balance difficulty, it is a hard game to recommend for any family member.”
Delivery
As Platform/Puzzle games in the market are “a dime a dozen”, so is Ethan: Meteor Hunter. The game is very fast-paced, but the puzzles (after the first hour of gameplay) can become repetitive and tedious. Also, because of the “hit or miss” controls, it seems the game is trying to deliver very precise control settings but it missed the mark. As some may see the game’s punishing platforming a challenge, we found it to be too much as, sadly, we had to end the play testing early for some of our gamers as they were getting frustrated (more in our family friendly section). Unless you are in the market for a punishing platformer/puzzle game, it may be best to pass this one up.
Family Friendly
With any playtesting that we do, we measure a lot of factors that go into a title’s score. From general gameplay, audio, video, controls and delivery to even whether the game is family-friendly. In our playtest of Ethan: Meteor Hunter, we found it not to be a family-friendly game. Some concerns that came up were the controls, difficulty, graphic death animation and overall gameplay. The controls of the game, as mentioned earlier in our Controls Section, felt off – we thought that it was our controllers, but it was more of an issue with the game’s controls itself. Being that the game is a platformer, the controls have to be very tight (responsive and accurate) so the player can make those critical jumps and other actions that are needed to pass the level(s), and we found that the controls in Ethan: Meteor Hunter were not responding consistently to the player input. Another issue was the graphic visuals for the main character. As a game that is rated E – 10, in our opinion, the death animations were a little too brutal and not friendly for an audience of anyone that is around 11 years or younger. It was during our play test that we saw the animations and decided not to test the game any further with some of our gamers around the 10-13 years because they weren’t comfortable with what they saw. The overall gameplay was also very “hit and miss”; being a platformer/puzzle game, the challenges in Ethan: Meteor Hunter felt very recycled and seemed repetitive after the first 90 minutes of gameplay. Finally, the unresponsive controls combined with the difficulty level made the game simply unplayable after a while. Now, we understand that the developers wanted to make a brutal puzzle/platformer for those who love this type of game, but this is no excuse to make the player experience countless deaths and failures. If anything, we do not recommend this game, as there are many puzzle/platform games out there that would be better choices for your gaming family. We concluded that this game is anything but family-friendly.
Closing
With bad controls, endless graphic deaths and repetitive, punishing gameplay, Ethan: Meteor Hunter is a title that should be passed up when choosing a new platformer for your digital library.
