The most fun you can have with your right hand. Review

The most fun you can have with your right hand.

Okay, well, maybe not… but the concept behind Glover is one of the
most original I’ve seen for the consoles in a while. So how does one explain
an animated glove in a game?

In the Crystal Castle located in the Crystal Kingdom is a wizard who uses magical
gloves to mix strange concoctions. But (you know there has to be a ‘but’) one
day the wizard accidentally mixes the wrong ingredients and (as John Madden
would say) BOOM! Glover goes flying out the window and the other glove
lands in a bubbling cauldron of evil. Unfortunately, the explosion not only
sent our hero flying but seven crystals as well. Thinking fast, Glover magically
changes the crystals into bouncy rubber balls so they don’t break and they subsequently
bounce to remote areas of the kingdom. This is where Glover’s journey begins.

Basically
you are required to take control Glover and guide a rubber ball to the end of
the level. Sound easy? Well it’s not. The addition of the ball adds a whole
new dimension to the run-jump-and-kill-enemies formula. Traversing even simple
obstacles such as steps or ramps becomes much more difficult.

Fortunately, Glover is pretty resourceful character (for a four-fingered glove)
and he’s got a myriad of moves available to him. There’s a lot of technique
involved in this game, as you’ll find out once you open the box and find a reference
card listing 18 moves Glover can do with or without the ball. These include
slapping, bouncing, throwing, and lobbing the ball as well as jumping, cartwheeling,
and running on top of the ball like a circus animal. In addition, Glover is
able to change the physical characteristics of the ball according to the situation.
The rubber ball (good bounce and throwing range) can change to a bowling ball
(large and slow, but good for brute force), a ball bearing (small, little bounce
and magnetic) and a crystal (breaks very easily, but awards 2x points).

With all the depth in the number of moves, some of the puzzles in the game
can get downright nasty and challenge even the most jaded puzzle masters. Glover
is so much more involved than other platformers that it even includes a training
level to familiarize you with the controls as well as the different moves that
Glover can do. I’d advise going through the training throughly as some of the
puzzles in the game require mastery of these skills and leave little room for
error.

Most of the game is finding your way around obstacles, but along the way you
can also pick up “garibs” that award extra lives and open bonus levels. Picking
up garibs with Glover alone awards the least points and picking them up with
the use of the ball awards considerably more. Glover also incorporates
some Marble Madness elements; specifically rolling the ball along narrow
ledges while dodging obstacles and enemies with one wrong move spelling disaster.

The gameplay
in Glover really brings out some mixed emotions. Half the time, Glover
acts so silly you can’t help but laugh when he’s doing a cartwheel and shouting,
“Wheeeee!!” or when you leave him idle for too long and he starts drumming his
fingers. The other half of the time you’ll be pulling your hair out trying to
figure out how to get the ball to a particular area without dying seventy-five
million times in the process.

Although Glover does a pretty good job of being challenging without
being overly frustrating, there’s twice as many ways to achieve instant death
than in other platformers.

Naturally, Glover has a limited amount of health and lives, but you also have
a limited number of balls to work with as well. Even if Glover has plenty of
lives left, if you accidentally send your last ball rolling down a bottomless
pit, it’s game over, man. Pretty much a mixed bag as far as gameplay is concerned;
puzzles are original and challenging, but Instant Death x2 is a little much.

The graphics look great, but there’s a lot of fog and some pop-up is evident.
Well, whaddya expect from a game that features a four-fingered glove as its
hero? Polygons look smooth with very little blockiness and the sound in Glover
gets extra high marks for the amount of flatulence involved. Why this is in
the game and to what purpose it serves (other than making immature fools like
me cackle hysterically) is as of yet undetermined. Music is of the platform
variety with some hummable tunes here and there but nothing really outstanding
or annoying.

Glover reminds me a lot of Iggy’s Reckin’
Balls in that they both look like simple or boring games, but underneath
the kiddie candy-coated exterior lies a good game with an amazing amount of
depth. Kudos to Hasbro Interactive for bringing something original to the tired
platform genre. If you’ve got the time, try Glover on for size.