Edge (2011)

For the price it is sold and the time you CAN spent with the game (and I have spent a lot of time) it is one of the best purchases i probably made for a game. The thing I like the most about "Edge" is that you can choose your "level of difficulty" in each stage for your own. If you decide to only go for the exit it will be pretty easy. There are a lot of checkpoints and they are mostly placed fair and reasonable. If you are playing this way "Edge" ist a normal platformer and getting to the end is not a question of knowing where to go but of your ability to move the cube the way you want. The next step would be collecting all the prisms scattered through the levels which is still easy although you have to think for some of them. The next thing to do is trying to get better times either way for the S+-rank (you need to collect all prisms for that) or competing for the leader-boards (just getting to the end the fastest way possible). At this point I would consider "Edge" as a puzzle-platformer since you need to find out what the best route is, where you should go first, looking for shortcuts and paying attention to timing for moving platforms etc. You also have to consider where you can and have to use the Edge-Time which is basically your cube clinging to a wall with just one edge. All the time spent as Edge-time will later on not be counted to your total time and therefore influence your results largely. So getting the best time possible is not only a question of sheer ability but also cleverness and like I said before is the part of the game I, personally, would consider as a puzzle. Although the graphic is minimalistic most levels give a different feeling and are unique and interesting with many interesting themes. Beside the games main 48 levels there is a free DLC with another 44 brilliant levels and additional 17 levels can be obtained by joining the Edge group at least if you are playing on Steam. To round this experience up the game comes with a catchy soundtrack which mostly will not annoy you.

Wonderful. Mind you, the gameplay is in no way special. You simply move everyone's favorite 3D shape (a cube, duh!) around by rolling it. Grabbing on stuff causes you to gain "EDGE time" (see what they did there?), which is subtracted from your total time. That's not what makes this game fun. What IS making this game fun are the levels. The levels usually have a gimmick, like "black hole", where you can enter a wormhole which moves you to a corresponding wormhole, and "robot sport" where, for a brief moment, you fight your rival in a giant robot suit. Absolute genius. There's even a level designed by a kid named Zias (named Zias), and even that was pretty awesome. The music is fantastic, with strong 8-bit roots and a bit of techno vibe thrown in. Also, the music doesn't restart when you die, making sure you aren't listening to the same "BEEP BOOP BOP" every 5 seconds. So, that's gameplay: good, levels: awesome, and music: great. I feel like that clears all criteria, so I'll just end this here. I recommend this game to most, and I didn't regret buying it. Don't mind that the metascore is in the yellow, that's just today's rating system talking. I bid you fair-well! -Coffeehaus