Ok, so LocoCycle is one of the most off-the-wall games I have played in many years. The story, which is presented through some in-game dialogue but also through several live action cutscenes, is about IRIS and Pablo. Pablo, a skilled mechanic, works for Big Arms Corporation, who, in conjunction with their R&D department, Big Science, have created the most sophisticated combat motorcycles ever. These motorcycles, IRIS (voiced by Lisa Foiles) and Spike (voiced by Robert Patrick), are a blue speed bike and silver chopper respectively. The opening cutscene takes place “somewhere in Nicaragua” with actor James Gunn playing the spokesman for Big Arms Corporation. He’s trying to get North Korean, Soviet, and American military commanders, as well as an African King, and a biker gang leader played by Tom Savini, interested in these bikes so they’ll place orders.
Unfortunately, while being put away for the night, IRIS is struck by a bolt of lightning. Seemingly unresponsive, she’s taken directly to Pablo’s garage to be repaired. IRIS suddenly awakens, becomes sentient, and, due to an ad on TV and a girl on the cover of a magazine, becomes obsessed with the idea that she must get to the Freedom Rally in Scottsburg, Indiana — and is willing to do whatever it takes to get there.
Pablo, played by Freddy Rodriguez, literally becomes attached to IRIS when his right leg becomes steadfastly stuck to the side of IRIS, apparently by the end of his pant leg. This doesn’t bother IRIS, as she begins a very long drive to Scottsburg. Meanwhile, it scares the hell out of Pablo who desperately wants to become separated from IRIS throughout their 5-6 hour adventure. Big Arms Corporation sends everything they have after IRIS, including SPIKE, hundreds of cars and SUVs with gun-toting agents, guys with jetpacks and hoverboards, little dudes with dynamite strapped to their chest that are dropped out of the back of a van in front of IRIS, agents on tall exoskeletons, mechs — you get the idea. It’s this variety and that of the gameplay mechanics that serve LocoCycle well, even while other aspects of the gameplay are lacking.
Playing LocoCycle is pretty straight-forward in that you control IRIS across five levels with three stages each, plus one final stage. All stages play identical to each other as far as you are in control of IRIS and you are constantly and automatically moving forward, down the road or path, or even the waterway that is in the apparent direction of Scottsburg, IN. Controls include weak and strong attacks, turbo, shoot, and A for interaction and counters. Enemies either come from “the top of the screen” in front of you, or (somehow) zoom on past you and turn to shoot back. Within each stage, there are usually three or four checkpoints in which your combat skills are quickly measured based on number of kills, accuracy, longest combo, time, and whether or not you had to restart or not. These values, A-F, are tallied at the end of level to assess points. The points are spent in between stages on a surprisingly interesting upgrade tree that is split into three tiers, Health & Turbo, Weapons, and Melee Attacks. You can see text descriptions and instantly watch small, short clips on each upgrade as you hover over each upgrade block or cell. A stage or two before the end of the game, I had accrued enough points to unlock every upgrade, but the tens of thousands of upgrade points you have left over can be used to purchase a variety of unlockables from The Garage on the main menu that include concept art, Twisted Pixel media such as booth photos from PAX as well as pictures of the staff when they were young, and so on, but by far the coolest unlockables are the behind the scenes of the Movie element of LocoCycle. From these, you can see footage of the game production, including seeing IRIS and SPIKE getting constructed by artists — pretty slick stuff.
Upgrades and unlockables are all well and good, but to get back to the gameplay, it isn’t very deep or satisfying, but it is fun. I will say that when the credits rolled, I wasn’t sad — LocoCycle is one of those games that is fun, but, only as long as it’s not too much trouble or doesn’t go on for too long. The difficulty in LocoCycle is such that rarely offers a challenge. Because it flows along smoothly enough and the upgrades and curiosity of what new enemy or minor gameplay addition may come up next, LocoCycle proved enjoyable enough for me to complete it in just two sittings totaling about five hours. Looking past the silly plot, the overly talkative IRIS (you can disable voice in the options, but I chose not to), the biggest detriment to LocoCycle was the repetition. It starts with the level design; each level and stage within the level is hardly distinguishable from the next. Sure, the environment changes from desert canyon to sunny to snowy mountains and farmland, but it all feels very much the same, even in chapter three where you spend part of the time literally driving on water. Infinite flat road with only very gradual turns means you can, and should for the sake of extra points, peg the turbo function as much as you possible. Encountering enemies gets repetitive too, but, I thought Twisted Pixel did a fair job of mixing this up. I particularly enjoyed the sequence, I believe it was at the end of level four, where IRIS is actually on auto-pilot and is facing the player, while a gigantic mech pursues. Pablo has to shoot at specifically marked spots with an infinite-ammo gun he just picked up just a moment earlier.
The typical encounters however go between ranged battles with vehicles in front of you, in which you fire your infinite ammo from IRIS (there is a cooldown element though), and melee attacks. The melee battles, especially once you upgrade a few times, become just a button mashing affair really. Pressing X has IRIS attacking while pressing Y every two to three seconds causes Pablo to spin in an automated circle, hitting up to two, three, and five enemies (with upgrades) at once. Stringing together 80+ hit combos becomes routine and about the only break from alternately pressing X and Y is having to press A for countering a foe. Countering comes up routinely in LocoCycle, as do quick time events which are apart of many of the stages and boss fights. The quick time events are fortunately very generous — I don’t think I failed any of them, even though I was “Late” or “Early” on some. I’m not even sure if failure is really possible on those. There are two or three instances whereby Pablo must do some emergency repairs on IRIS. These have to be done in succession and fairly quickly to advance, but the problem is, as was the case with the final interactive part of the game, what you need to do isn’t made clear. This oversight is forgivable, as I too like to cutdown on tutorial and clutter in-game, but I thought these parts could have been more informative. Not knowing what the game wanted me to do with the thumbsticks on these few occasions reminded me of the controls debacle of having to use the Force to crash a Star Destroyer in Force Unleashed II.
As for presentation, LocoCycle could have easily been released on the Xbox 360 or anything current gen, probably mobile as well. This isn’t Killzone Shadow Fall or Ryse, so in that regard it’s not “next gen.” The graphics are fine and I guess fitting for the game in general given the modest budget of LocoCycle. I had no framerate or technical issues and I thought a lot of the animations were pretty cool, and in some cases, funny. The live action cutscenes were honestly strange to see; reminded me of the Command & Conquer games or the Sega CD and 3DO in general. I’m not opposed to live action for cutscenes, or even gameplay, but I’m still undecided as to what it really brought to the experience of the product itself, if that makes any sense. Hearing IRIS’ constant chatter was sometimes annoying, even though at times her movie references or other attempts at humor garned a smirk, but for the most part the dialogue was cheesy, fitting for the story in that regard. Robert Patrick as SPIKE was a lot cooler, obviously.
Anyway, despite being very thin and largely repetitive on gameplay, I had a good time with LocoCycle. If you can accept that it’s not “next gen” and that it’s just a goofy, yet fun if not very challenging, arcade game, then LocoCycle may be worth your attention.