Nukezilla Review: Balloon Boy (XBLIG)

Frustration. Probably the number one reason people stop playing games. When a game just aggravates you through either its difficulty, lack of decent mechanics or nonsensical plot, frustration is what usually mounts. But frustration can be a good thing if the game is just good enough to get annoyed at, but not throw the controller across the room.

Balloon Boy is one of those games. Set your mind back to October 2009 when reports surfaced that a little boy had gotten inside a silver balloon and was floating across America, apparently at heights of up 7,000 ft. It turned out to be a bizzare hoax, but with story that we have the premise for this side-scrolling float ‘em up.

The game sees you take control of the titular character as he flies through the air attached to his large silver balloon. In the sky there’s various threats to avoid including birds, helicopters, thunder clouds and of course the tree tops or buildings below you. You have to dodge, weave, duck and climb out the way of these threats using only the left stick and it’s pretty damn hard. As you continue along your vicarious route, you rack up points. If you hit any of the objects you fail and have to go all the way back to the start. You find yourself getting into the flow and the controls are nicely balanced meaning that you can quite easily control your balloon boy.

Every time you do fail (and you will, a lot) you never feel like the game failed you by not responding in time or doing as its told. You failed because you were too slow and you suck. As per my introduction, this game does have a healthy dose of frustration. I must have died 20-30 times in the 30 minutes or so I initially played it, but crucially I still wanted to carry on playing. Seeing the fail screen, pressing start and then A to start a new game will become part of your muscle memory very quickly.

Often you’ll be flying along when a stream of birds or two helicopters take over the screen, meaning that there is literally no way of you getting past. In a game that can be quite irritating, this sort of thing really reduces the fun. I’ve often been flying along quite happily to then be trapped because there’s no possible way I can carry on. When this happens, the frustration goes too far and you’re into controller throwing territory.

Well drawn vector cartoon characters, clouds and vehicles don the scene with the design of clouds most impressing me. Along the bottom of the screen there’s a “bottom-third” bar that you see on TV news. On the right this houses both your current and high score and scrolling underneath you get various Onion-style fake news headlines. These include some pretty entertaining headlines such as ”Beloved TV show ends after 6 years of confusion and nonsensical plots” or “Archaeologists discover Rome was built in a day.” These add that little extra to the game so when you’re casually floating along (or frantically as the case may be) you can have a quick chuckle. This parody TV station theme also carries on when a mustacheoed news report occasionally pops up over the screen giving you a comical line. There’s also photographers which flash the screen making it momentarily hard to see when your balloon boy is. The last two aren’t especially funny and while they break up the gameplay slightly they make an already difficult game much harder.

Balloon Boy is a well-rounded, entertaining game that you’d actually want to play more than once. It’s irritating, maddening and has some slight design flaws, but you’ll still start a new game when you hit a helicopter for 8th time that minute. The fake headlines will give you a laugh and have some subtle comments regarding how TV news networks operate (“TV channel runs out of headlines… please wait while we make up more news”). If you’re looking for a good way to spend 80 points, you can’t go much worse than Balloon Boy.

Disclaimer: Developer FauxRobo provided a review copy of this game.