I closed my eyes and held down the right bumper. All I could do was hope I would stop on a game that wasn’t going to be to terrible. Playing Xbox Marketplace roulette can sometimes get ugly.

I released the bumper, and stared at the screen.

“ULTIMATE POLYGON”.

Wait, what? Ultimate what now? This simple title had already confused me. Things weren’t looking good. Even though I wasn’t convinced, I’d already committed to playing the first one I stopped on, so I would have to give it a bash. Luckily, there was something about the game that intrigued me, something i couldn’t quite put my finger on. Maybe I wanted to see if it really WAS the ultimate in polygon gameplay…

oh, hello square...

I stocked up on Microsoft points and sacked any plans I had for the rest of the day. Purchasing the game, I thought I would use the download time to stock up on supplies. The game was downloaded almost instantly, however. I’d forgotten I was downloading an indie game. Oh well, who needs food anyway?

From the offset, the game was pleasing; with its simple graphics and vibrant color scheme. Oh, and not to forget the catchy theme song. On my first shot, I didn’t pay much attention to the main menu since I wanted to just dive straight into the game. Checking the controls first would have been the smart idea. Luckily for me, this game has only 5 controls, UP, DOWN, LEFT, RIGHT and HOVER. My first complaint was that the vertical and horizontal components were controlled by the left thumb stick and not, as I would have suggested, the D-pad. HOVER was just a simple click of “A.” No complaints there.

The game itself is simple enough. The screen scrolls sideways to the left with your polygon (the interchangeable shape that is representative of your character) sitting upon a single line. The UP and DOWN refers to your orientation on the line, either being above it, or below it, allowing you to doge the blue squares that drift towards you, from both sides of the line. You begin with three lives, represented by three jagged circles, shown in a box at the center of the bottom edge of the screen, simply entitled “Lives”. Hitting a blue square causes you to lose a life.

there are three of you!?

To begin, the game is very slow with the blue squares being spaced relatively far apart, allowing you to stay on one side of the line with almost impunity. Gradually, the spaces between squares begin to decrease. The squares occur more regularly on both sides of the line, sometimes in groupings of three or more. This is where HOVER comes into play. Once the ‘A’ button is pressed, the block lifts off the line to a height, conveniently, of one blue square for roughly three seconds. This allows multiple squares to be dodged. Coupling this with a simple push of the thumb stick, will allow your polygon to travel a greater distance within the three seconds, or for it to travel a lesser distance if the stick is pushed the other way. Alternatively, you can always just switch to the other side of the line.

The game becomes increasingly more difficult with each passing second leading to the eventual incorporation of red rectangles. These are placed over and around the blue squares, stopping you from being able to simply hover over them, as contact with them will also remove one of your precious three lives.

The incorporation of these red rectangles means it becomes necessary to begin to both hover over squares and to switch to the other side of the line in rapid succession.

i believe i can fly...

After the first minute or so of the game, the “easy” stage is completed, and the initial music changes to something with a more up-beat tempo. I wonder why that would be? Suddenly you’re thrown into a maze of blue squares, a multitude of them on both sides of the line, in groups of up to six blocks with their loving companions the red rectangles hovering around just waiting for you to slip up and hit ‘A’. If you can dodge through this little interval, you are still far from safe. Next comes the yellow square. And what harm could they do? nothing yellow ever hurts you.

This would be correct; the yellow squares don’t hurt you. They just make you go faster, A LOT faster. Essentially, they just hurtle you into the waiting blue squares. It gets worse though. It’s not just one yellow square sitting there innocently waiting to hurtle its unsuspecting victim to its eventual death, it’s lots. Lots of yellow squares just sitting there. I think I’ve developed Xanthophobia.

damn you yellow square.

If you are able to pass through all this chaos, you are said to have “won”, but have you really? As brilliant as I found the game, did I really win? I spent hour after hour trying to get past just the second stage. That’s a lot of my life I’ve lost. To a shape. If there had been an encapsulating storyline, or lovable main character, I could maybe, just maybe, justify those hours. But can I really say I’ve won?

Maybe I’m being too harsh. The game did entertain me, and the sense of joy gained from knowing that I got past that stage that had me beat, albeit through a lot of luck and button mashing, makes me feel oddly proud of myself. I may have been unable to complete final fantasy VII: Dirge of Cerberus (I kept running out of ammo), or to pull off a laser flip in skate 3, but I am able to direct a polygon along a flat line. I think I win there.

The game may have had its downsides, like silly controls, no verification that you’ve switched to another shape, a random glitch in the main menu where when trying to select “play game” you get “how to play”, and even the fact that once dead, you had to start from the very beginning, enduring the slow square……square….square on other side of line……square, game play for another minute or so, just to get back into the high octane thriller of the rest of the “stage”. A check point wouldn’t have hurt.

Alas, I have to judge this game as an indie game, and at 80 Microsoft points, you can’t go wrong. If you’re looking for a means to pass the time, or you just want a means to satisfy your need to feel you’ve achieved something, then this game is highly recommended.

By Fergus Morison.
Fergus is a new contributor to the site. He mainly plays xbox 360, but also enjoys using the PS3.