Puppeteer

In Puppeteer, you play Kutaro, a boy who has been turned into a puppet by the malicious Moon Bear King, the villain of this piece. Your puppet loses his head, and throughout the game he finds and wears loads of different objects in place of his head – submarines, bananas, octopuses, etc. He’s aided in his quest to defeat the Moon Bear King by a pair of enchanted scissors, a floating cat, an old crone who works in the kitchens, and a pixie. Confused yet? Did I mention this all takes place on the moon?

Initially confusing storyline aside, at its heart Puppeteer is a 2D platformer, with graphics vaguely reminiscent of LittleBigPlanet. The game’s core mechanic is based around the enchanted scissors I mentioned earlier, which allow you to cut your way through almost anything that floats in the air, pulling your character along with it. This allows the gameplay to move in all sorts of directions, particularly when you’re cutting along a seam, and Kutaro zooms along at great speed.

The different heads you find as you play give you access to various bonus levels, assuming that is, that you have the right head at the right time. Take a hit, and Kutaro loses his head. Grab it back within a couple of seconds though, and you can carry on without resorting to one of your two spare heads. This leads to frantic scrambles to recover your last head, as unlike a chicken, Kutaro doesn’t last long without a noggin.

where the game really shines is its sense of humour and undeniable charm.

The action is enjoyable, but where the game really shines is its sense of humour and undeniable charm. It’s bright, colourful, and a joy to look at. The whole game is presented as a play, with the curtains and stagelights visible on the screen at all time. The narrator provides some entertaining commentary to the game as the audience oohs, ahhs, and cheers along with the action. It’s an interesting touch which at first I found slightly irritating but it definitely grew on me. There are lots of little touches, like if you leave the player alone for a while, the audience gradually gets louder and louder as they talk amongst themselves. As soon as you move the controls, they all shhh each other and then fall silent. The dialogue among the characters is great fun, and the game frequently pokes fun at some of its deliberately hammy character acting.

For a game priced at about £25, it’s a surprisingly long adventure. I wouldn’t have been surprised to have seen this priced at the full £40, especially considering it is available on Blu-Ray disc as well as a download from the PSN. There are one or two moments towards the end where the length feels a tiny bit padded with some similar sections to earlier in the game, but it’s not a game breaker, and it wouldn’t have been a short game even without these sections. Also, for a game so cute and colourful, you might think it was aimed at children, but some tricky sections and a lot of quick time events during boss fights could prove quite frustrating for them. (And adults too, but I personally don’t mind QTEs)