Few games make feel privileged and blessed to be a gamer. Ocarina of Time did it when it came out and so did Okami. Still, in this age of AAA-gaming where 'Perfect Game' means having the best graphics or turning around and insulting the player, imagine my surprise when I came across The Puppeteer.
STORY:
You are Kutaro, a boy who's been spirited away in his sleep and forced to serve the tyrant Moon Bear King on, you guessed it, the moon. Like all kidnapped children, Kutaro's spirit is housed inside a puppet and must now traverse the Moon Lands in search of the Moon Shards to overthrow the Moon Bear King and return home.
Make no mistake, The Puppeeter is an amalgamation of multiple literary works in children's fiction and wears the moniker proudly. It takes inspiration from Grimm's fairytales, Japanese folklore, every kid's childish fear and weaves a beautiful tale about friendship and growing uo. It's a tired and tested formula but The Puppeteer dresses it up with a once-in-a-lifetime presentation, FANTASTIC voice-acting and memorable characters that you can't help but fall in love with it.
However, true to it's origins, The Puppeeter can be QUITE DARK. In vein of the themes of Prostitution, Murder, Rape that can be found between the lines of our children's fairytales, The Puppeteer itself packs a wallop. The creators stated that their intent was to make a game that both adults and children can enjoy and it shows. Kids will laugh at the zany going ons but the adults WILL pick up on the more darker aspects of the story. Expect to take note of Patricide, Beheading, Murder, Suicide and other forms of ghastly and grizzly fates (Captain's Gaff and Nebula's stories were particularly dark)
GRAPHICS:
The Puppeteer somewhat defies your local convention. It's an action-platformer but the stage it's set upon is both literal and figurative. Kutaro is both a puppet in the story and in presentation. The game presents itself as stage show about puppets, clouds hanging from the ceiling via contraptions, flat backgrounds that change with every 'scene' and the presence of an omnipresent narrator. It's not all 2D, though, the stage becomes more and more elaborate and watching one scene transition into one another (complete with gears and contraption switching) never gets old.
There is. Really. No. Way to describe The Puppeteer's art style. You have to watch a video or experience it for yourself.
GAMEPLAY:
Rayman Legends would be the 'closest' I could come to describing how The Puppeteer plays. You move from left to right or right to left, depending on the stage, avoiding enemies or slaying them with your mighty scissors. On occasions, just like RL, the action moves from zipping along the X-axis and moves to the Y-axis territory (even the Z-axis at times. Bring your 3D glasses)
Difficulty-wise, it's not that challenging. There are quite a few hectic jumps and a few sequences that require patience and memorizing patterns but the game will never make you feel like it's an unfair death or that it's too easy. On the bright side, you'll be swimming in lives by the end.
Also...the boss fights. 'nuff said.
SOUND
Amazing soundtrack. Amazing voice-work. Nothing else to be said. Moving on.
CONCLUSION
I can honesty and without shame say that The Puppeteer was perfect. It's a game overflowing with heart and passion. Best of all, it's a game that WANTS you to have fun. In an age where Indie games or big AAA titles want you to feel ashamed for playing videogames and tries to judges us for it -- or games that are simply a lifeless apathetic product meant to siphon our friends, it's gratifying to play something so pure.
And it's $40 dollars (may be even cheaper)! What are you waiting for! Go pick it up!
Could you get rich by investing in PS3 games? Almost definitely not. Can you make a few bucks by flipping PS3 games over the years? Yeah, sure! It wouldn’t even be that difficult. But let’s face it: Once these games are in your collection, you’re probably keeping them forever.
After a game's multiple generations old, and can't be had new at a reasonable price, that's when I see nothing wrong with emulation.
What's the point of paying someone scalper prices when the dev/publisher isn't even benefiting from it?
I paid $30 for SH Downpour on PS3 now it's around $70-$85 Canadian Lolipop Chainsaw I paid $15 and it has really gone up in price. I wonder if Transformers War and Fall of Cybertron will go up in price two of the best Transformers games every made.
Ever since Sony announced that they would shut down PS3 store these prices have skyrocketed and even though Sony backtracked now most gamers realize that it's a matter of time before the PlayStation 3 store is shut down. If you want these games get them while you can even if digital because once that story shut down the physical prices will just go crazy high we saw that already
And many of these games did not sell like crazy amounts so they are limited number of copies available for sale at any given time
It's been a roller coaster on the PS3 front. Prices went absolutely insane a few weeks ago, but with the PS3/Vita stores staying open for now, prices have plummeted back to earth. This article breaks it down, complete with buying suggestions and current prices.
Recently I sold Lightning Returns for $25, Tales of Symphonia for $50, Bleach for $40, Night Trap for $90 and The Orange Box for $45. I'm making a business of finding PS3 games for cheap and selling them for slightly less than what other people are selling them for on ebay. I ordered both the standard version of Doom Collection for Switch and collector's edition for Doom Collection for PS4 for the purpose of resale in the future.
The Ghetto Gamer has been predicting and tracking PS3 prices over the past year. The last few months have seen a massive spike in the pricing of PS3 games, and it may be too late to pick up some of the more rare and hard-to-find ones at a reasonable price. Some of these are nuts.
Again, seen this coming from the start, glad I already bought everything I wanted over the years 👌
Stil remember selling ps3 titles to buy a PS4. but i keept the ones i liked more. Did the same with the titles of the PS4 to get a PS5.
Good review, few errors
No way I'd give it 10/10 overall though. Artistically, yes. But gameplay-wise it can be fiddly (and also frustrating on boss battles). It does depend on how tenacious you are in overcoming that but the pop up book style, whilst nicely done, ends up feeling like you've managed to blag your way to the next scene. A game that deserves to be fondly remembered but I feel more fondly about the art than the gameplay itself. It veers between being very easy and very hard in the blink of an eye.