We all love a good arcade game, right?
The combination of addictive gameplay, a difficulty level that’s just right, and the thrill of beating your high scores has a clear appeal for gamers of all stripes. Arcade Fuzz tries to go one better than this – literally – in offering two arcade games for the price of one.
Upon booting up the game for the first time, you’re met with the slightly psychedelic menu screen of the first game in the package, TTV3. As with many arcade games, the aim of TTV3 is to survive as long as possible without dying; your success here is measured in the number of obstacle-filled screens you can exit without a death. Hitting any obstacle will bring your run to an end, which is something that you learn quickly, despite the lack of any instructions whatsoever.
As you progress, the order of the screens is random, and each screen is independent from the last. This, of course, means you can’t plan for what lies ahead, and it consequently leads to a fast-paced experience where you must constantly be on your toes in order to survive. However, it also means that there are no patterns to learn and adapt to.
This becomes a problem in light of how the “map” – if you could call it that – is laid out. The game allows you to exit screens from any direction, and you start each screen in the middle, rather than entering from an edge as you might otherwise expect. While this facilitates the random ordering of the screens, it causes problems given that it’s possible to exit from one screen and run straight into an obstacle on the next if you’re accidentally heading in the wrong direction.
The game is difficult, requiring both precision and speed, but the gameplay is nevertheless fairly uninspired. There’s a degree of satisfaction in beating your own scores, but beyond this, the game is simply not fun or interesting enough in its own right to offer a huge amount of enjoyment.
The second game in the Arcade Fuzz package is Warpzone Drifter. This game sees you in a high-speed, brake-less car where you must activate a series of checkpoints that are scattered around the field without dying in order to progress. After the first level, there are obstacles to avoid as well.
The game is challenging, largely thanks to the way the car handles, and it doesn’t help that the playing field extends off the screen for a small way before the true barrier that will bring your run to an end. Regardless of whether this was an intentional feature or not, it does make it harder than it needs to be: if you can’t see your car, how can you be expected to control it with any sort of accuracy?
Again, like in TTV3, beyond the appeal of beating your personal bests, the gameplay is rather dull, and in the absence of a global leaderboard, there’s little to entice you back for multiple runs.
Indeed, arcade games by all accounts should hook you in and provide some sort of incentive to just have one more go. Neither TTV3 nor Warpzone Drifter excels in this regard; the former is more enjoyable than the latter and may be a passable use of fifteen minutes if you have nothing better to do, but ultimately Arcade Fuzz won’t keep you coming back for more.
Arcade Fuzz $1.99
Summary
Arcade Fuzz is a two-in-one package deal of challenging arcade games. It sounds fine on paper, but neither TTV3 nor Warpzone Drifter is particularly enticing from a gameplay perspective and both are likely to leave you underwhelmed.