Playful surprised us with some more DownLoadable Content for Super Lucky’s Tale last week and I’m always excited to find an excuse to put more hours into one of my favourite platformers around.
Story
This time, Lucky finds himself on Foxington, a new explorable world with 16 challenges to beat. If he beats them all he can prove himself as a full-blown guardian to his sister and the others. But beware: these challenges are a tad harder to beat than the main game’s content!
Randy Savage is freelancing as Macho Yeti these days?
Visuals & Audio
I’m still very much in love with the childish, crisp visuals of Super Lucky’s Tale. Just hopping and burrowing around the main hub worlds makes me giddy. On Xbox One X, you’ll get the same 4K + 60FPS experience as before and it just pops from your screen.
Lucky’s got a new hot dog addiction.
There’s also a brand new aesthetic present in the platforming levels, this time going for an eighties style sci-fi movie. Truthfully, I’m not a big fan of this look & feel myself but I realise that many others would disagree.
Neon colours: check. Laser shooting dolphins with rainbows: Check.
One example of what bothers me about it is Lucky’s burrow ability. It used to be pretty self-evident that he could dig into loose soil in the previous worlds, but here he can also dig into certain terrain types but it’s not always 100% obvious when this is possible or not. There’s even an achievement tied to using it in one level as you have to try and reach the end unnoticed (don’t worry, it’s not as if they introduced a stealth element).
Where the eighties style did win me over was in the soundtrack, an example of which you can hear in the video above. I’m afraid I have to report that the well-known audio bug is still present in this latest DLC, even though there have been other updates to the game in the meanwhile: if you take a screenshot, record footage or open your Xbox Options menu, there is a chance that all audio will be gone when you return to the game. You can only fix it by restarting the game. As before, this seems to be an issue only for those who wish to record footage though, so the average player may not be bothered by it. There’s also another issue where cinematics have an echo in them. There are only two cinematics in the DLC but I had it for both of them.
Gameplay
I’ve heard many complaints online about the camera in SLT, but I’ve always found it to be perfect for the level design: it’s a 3D game but it often feels like a semi 2D platformer because of the level layout. Not having to bother with the camera controls is in some ways a plus, especially for younger gamers, as they don’t have to worry about using the right analog stick. The platforming levels in this DLC are a tad harder than the other ones before it though: there are lots of pitfalls and spikes that kill you in one hit so you better bring your A-game, especially if you want to get the achievements that put an extra restriction on your (don’t get seen, get all gems, get ALL collectables, kill ALL enemies…)
There are 3 boss battles: 2 of which are harder versions of the main game and one is just a bunch of enemies and environmental hazards thrown at you. I was kind of disappointed not to get a completely new boss battle as fighting Lady Marmalade in the previous DLC quickly turned into my favourite boss battle of the game, so much so that I wanted to go back and beat all of the game’s bosses without taking damage. There’s no achievement for it, but I took it upon me as a personal crusade.
The platforming levels and the bosses have become like second nature for me. They only pose an issue if I’m careless or get the Random Number Generator gods against me. But I’ll always struggle with the Super Monkey Ball-like levels where you have to tilt the entire world to move Lucky around. It just doesn’t feel as if you have perfect control over where Lucky’s goes and the tiny red ball he’s in isn’t as visible as it should be. Fun anecdote: I truly can’t help physically leaning into the direction I want Lucky to go in the real world.
the world goes tilt and so do I!
One fun addition is that you can now finally spend your hard-earned coins on something: new outfits for Lucky! I’ve always mentioned that it felt kind of pointless collecting all those coins and now they’ve finally managed to shut me up. It’s not even tied to the DLC as everyone who owns the game can now access these stores on the various worlds. Personally, there wasn’t really an outfit that I preferred over Lucky’s regular looks though, so I just ended up buying the one tied to an achievement. Speaking of which: be careful spending your coins if you’re still saving up for the 99.999 coins achievement, as spending them may affect your progression on this one (but the team already confirmed to be working on this!)
Wrestler Lucky, he’ll fox you up!
Final Word
I can never get enough of this game: it looks great, plays great and I just can’t help wanting to complete everything in it 100% so I’m always happy to see new content. It’s a shame the sound issues are still present and not all of the new aesthetics click with me personally, but it’s undoubtedly great value at only $4.99 so I would certainly recommend anyone who owns the game to check out this DLC!
Super Lucky's Tale - Guardian Trials
4.99
