On paper, Cyber Hook taps into several gameplay elements that are innately appealing: It encourages high-speed gameplay, it blends parkour platforming with precision, and its retrowave environments look really freaking cool. But, its PlayStation implementation is somewhat buggy, hindering the momentum further beyond progression decisions that already prevent players from blazing through the games. I want to believe that Blazing Stick will continue to support the PlayStation version and iron out some of the kinks (and hopefully release new content, too), as its current implementation leaves much to be desired.
High-speed gameplay. Flying through a retrowave landscape with a yellow sunset in the background. Swinging around rectangular prisms. Running across yellow walls. No, this isn’t a description of a Spider Man mission. This is but a taste of what you can expect from Cyber Hook, an indie 3D-platformer by Blazing Stick.
Blazing Stick describes Cyber Hook as a fast-paced, 3D platformer that has players use parkour skills and a grappling hook to scale and ride walls, all while blasting blocks with a laser gun. This is an apt description, barring one notable detail: Speedrunning is the key to succeeding, and with speedrunning comes the notion of practicing over and over and over again.
Cyber Hook blends 3D-platforming with nuanced traversal mechanics often seen in the likes of Insomniac’s Spider-Man series. Using a grappling hook, finger-gun, and a time-slowing effect that can increase your grappling hook’s range, players are tasked with speedrunning through horizontal and vertical (and everything in between) gaps and obstacles. For the most part, the mechanics are solid, but some of the more-advanced mechanics are taught to the player in a roundabout fashion. For instance, the wall-running tutorial is less of a tutorial and more of a suggestion, taking place between the first and second set of levels. The grappling hook may take some getting used to in the hands of some players, but once you figure out how to exploit momentum, you can make your character fly at ridiculously fast speeds. It’s exhilirating once you get the hang of it.
At its core, Cyber Hook‘s gameplay loop is simple. You select a level, are given a general timeframe to complete it, and it’s off to the (retrowave) races you go. After successfully platforming, hooking, and flying through a level, you’re awarded crystals depending on the time you spent on your attempt. If you managed to hit the bare minimum time, you’re awarded with a single crystal. If you were really speedy, you’ll get more (up to three). Too slow? None for you. This repeats until you’ve finished every level in the current set. If you were quick and collected enough crystals, the next set of levels is ready for you to complete. If not…you have to go back and replay some of the levels you struggled with completing.
Cyber Hook is all about speedrunning and encouraging players to improve their momentum through trial and error. Once you get the hang of a level’s design and what it takes to fly through it in a matter of seconds, it feels incredibly rewarding. However, locking the next world/set of levels behind a crystal requirement is counterintuitive for mastery, especially since the game’s natural difficulty spikes in each set of levels teaches you mechanics and refines your ability to progress in an efficient manner. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not impossible to get the necessary crystals to move on to a new world. It’s just disruptive to blaze through an entire set of levels, only to be told that I have to immediately go back and retry some of the levels in order to secure additional crystals. Even more, some variety for obtaining these crystals would have been welcome, such as having one obtained for general completion, another for a ridiculously high score, and then a final optional objective like seeking out an in-level orb/hidden enemy or something like that.
Each Cyber Hook level is unique, of which there are over 70. Some of the patterns may feel familiar after a time, but never once did I feel that anything was copy and pasted or even repetitive. The introductory levels eased me into the general mechanics of Cyber Hook, only to test my mastery of them on an incremental basis with each passing level. The retrowave theme is bright and features contrasting colors that keep elements discernible, crisp, and fluid even at blistering high speeds. Interactible elements are clearly visible from far away, too, and rarely obscured by weird camera angles or blending into the background. For what it’s worth, these designs are consistent, and even at high speeds it’s quite easy to figure out what can be hooked and what should be avoided.
My only gripe with the level design is that I would have liked some aesthetic variety, as the levels adhered to a consistent color scheme. I get that consistency is ABSOLUTELY key for a game that tests players’ mettle, reaction times, and speedrunning skills, but changing up the backgrounds or some of the neutral colors would have been appealing for the eyes. I’m aware that the PC version of Cyber Hook has a DLC expansion (Lost Numbers) that adds an additional 30 levels, mechanics, hazards, and color schemes, but this expansion is not yet available on PlayStation at time of writing. I sincerely hope that Lost Numbers come to the PlayStation platform (along with other fixes), as it looks incredibly cool from the videos I’ve seen of PC players’ experiences.
Playing Cyber Hook on my PS5 was not as fun as I had hoped given that I encountered several bugs that hindered my progression. Shooting green blocks occasionally froze my game (while the music was playing) for a good two seconds before resuming. In one playthrough, I somehow lost the ability to use the grappling hook (R2) altogether. I thought my DualSense was dying, but restarting the game fixed the problem. When I hit crazy fast speeds, my reticle would occasionally jump/wander when I was aiming at the grapple-able blue blocks. Again, I thought that my controller was experiencing issues/drift, but a restart of the game would fix itself. There were even several instances where my game would just crash outright, taking me back to the PS5 home screen. Thankfully, the autosave preserved my progress. After experiencing a few crashes, I did begin to experience this gnawing concern that I may have to restart my progress because of a crash, losing what could have been my best speedrun yet.
It pains me to see this lackluster experience on the PS5, as this next-gen console is fit for the likes of high-speed gameplay. As a fan of the WipEout series, I jump at the chance to play games and exerience the exhiliration associated with speedrunning, be it racing or parkour platforming. The idea of Cyber Hook is flat out awesome. When it works, it works. However, its current implementation leaves much to be desired, and I do want more from this franchise.
On paper, Cyber Hook taps into several gameplay elements that are innately appealing: It encourages high-speed gameplay, it blends parkour platforming with precision, and its retrowave environments look really freaking cool. But, its PlayStation implementation is somewhat buggy, hindering the momentum further beyond progression decisions that already prevent players from blazing through the games. I want to believe that Blazing Stick will continue to support the PlayStation version and iron out some of the kinks (and hopefully release new content, too), as its current implementation leaves much to be desired.
