On Reflection

Cloning Clyde certainly hasn’t improved with age and with nearly double the amount of XBLA games available than when we first looked at it, there is far better fare. Sit down, shut up, and get Contra instead.

The Score

This is old-skool with a K, 2D platforming at its best and worst. At its best when you’re making use of your abilities to solve the simple puzzles and at its worst when it tries to do anything remotely different, such as combat and collecting lots of secret hidden stuff. No one likes finding secret hidden stuff any more. This is 2008. We have mobile phones! We have the internet! We have HDTV! We have absolutely no reason to scurry around the depths of a 2D platformer just to find all the hidden dolls because the developers thought it would be a really good idea and not at all boring! Sigh.

First, the good stuff. Featuring the usual mix of pressure pad switches, rocks, big stretches of water and other obstacles, there are plenty of tasty puzzles to get stuck into. On top of that, Clyde can mutate into a sheep, chicken and various other animals, each with their own unique abilities. The later levels are the best, as NinjaBee gets to scratch its creative itch and throw more and more elaborate puzzles at you. They’re always confusing and almost always a real pleasure to solve. The problem lies with the other 33 per cent that makes up the game. The aimless wandering around trying to find hidden dolls for the Achievements, the pointless inclusion of combat, the convoluted hub that makes the front-end needlessly complicated.

Cloning Clyde is a pleasant enough way to pass the time when you’ve exhausted the Marble Blast Ultra/Geometry Wars ports of call. It’s a million times better than Frogger but unfortunately, until X360 is brave enough to start awarding 2 million out of ten scores, a safe score of six will do the safe Cloning Clyde justice in the meantime. This suggests Cloning Clyde is only three times better than Frogger but trust us, it’s a million times better.

6 out of 10