Once again, thanks to the Humble Bundle I was able to experience another game I would have never otherwise heard of – 140. 140 is a platformer with a slight twist – as you progress more beats are added and your “platforming” becomes more rhythm based.
The idea of 140 is simple – complete each level and defeat the boss. The more mini-orbs you find and return to their proper spot nearby, the more elements are added to the level. By the end of each level you will find yourself balancing between trying to do good platforming and timing everything based off the current beat of the music.
If you couldn’t already tell, music plays a decent role in 140. Thankfully with that being the case, the music isn’t too awful. While it isn’t exactly music I’d listen to normally, it fit the game. That being said, however, I had one major issue right as you beat the main game… There is an ear piercing sound that happens when you beat the “final” boss. I literally mean ear piercing.
Unfortunately when it started to come down to it, I found myself getting more and more frustrated as interesting platforming came into just precise timing with the beat. I had many times where I would
just keep dying over and over due to messing up the timing by half a second.
Another thing that could definitely use some work is the save system. While levels have “checkpoints” in them, they don’t actually save your progress if you were to quit the game. I accidentally exited out of the game – something you can do just by holding down either Escape or Start (controller) – part way through level 1 and found myself having to redo everything. After that, I didn’t dare test it again as I feared for losing all my progress. Supposedly though, it does “save” your progress if you were to start the next level… bit of a hassle.
The boss battles themselves can be quite tricky for timing – especially the last main boss. Your reaction times need to be good on these more than any sort of platforming skills. It would have definitely been nice if these did include a bit more platforming rather than either just dodge all these crazy things coming at you or timing an attack just right.
Control wise, 140 is what you would expect from a platformer. Nothing more, nothing less. They didn’t seem too picky to me, it was more just a matter of having to deal with some of the timing with jumps was just really picky.
Overall, 140 is a quick little diversion of a game that can get somewhat frustrating at times – especially on boss battles. That being said, I wouldn’t recommend this to anyone too much unless they are a big fan of either platforming or some rhythm games – preferably both. I did enjoy most of my time playing 140, though frustrations at boss battles just got to me.
140 Review Score
2.5/5
140 is available on Steam for $4.99.
