Fenix Rage Review

Strangely enough, the reasoning behind the cookies isn't the only thing Fenix Rage is a little bit lax in explaining. Right now I'm trekking across the final, final world – unlocked only after you acquire every single cookie in the previous eight worlds – and I've yet to ascertain why I'm here or what I'm doing. Okay, so I know what I'm doing – repeatedly smashing my buttons with the energy of a hyperactive monkey – but the larger events surrounding it are seriously hazy. The game communicates almost entirely via dialogue-free cutscenes, which is a fine endeavour in theory, but that rather relies on me being able to tell what's actually going on in them in the first place, which is a lot harder than it sounds. Hey look, that alien cube thing crash-landed here and covered everything in blue sorbet. Also here's a frosty-looking guy in a cloak who Fenix immediately takes offence to, because he's a xenophobic little twerp. Oh wait, they're friends now. Great, so why are there still four worlds still to go if the main antagonist just stopped being a prat? Wait, what's that plague doctor skull thing? Did he just sacrifice himself to something or was he abducted by the little blue men? Why am I feeding all my cookies to a giant celestial swan?

Really though, who could honestly admit to caring? Fenix Rage needs a story about as much as Doom does, and the fact that I'm even bringing it up should tell you that I'm struggling for things to gripe about over here. With that in mind, let's skip right to the boss battles. Do you remember when you were in primary school and there was that one kid who was really unhealthily into Pokemon? Of course you did; every school had one. They'd sit in the library with a stack of paper and design their own, letting neither their lack of imagination nor their inability to properly handle a pen prevent them from spewing out reams of shapeless uninspired blobs with increasingly difficult to pronounce names. Fenix Rage's boss battles are where those long-forgotten designs finally surface: a parade of greenish floating things with eyes, mouths and tentacles stapled on seemingly at random. Attack patterns? Well, we have some that fling goo at you, some that chase you, and – wait for it – some that do both. That's about it, I'm afraid. The final boss stands head-and-shoulders above the rest – possessing both a distinct design and several panic-inducing attacks – but since it's standing head-and-shoulders above a cesspit full of fetid meat, it still kind of stinks.

I'm also a little taken aback by the Fenix Rage's approach to a difficulty curve, in the sense that it's actually pretty reasonable. Normally with this particular brand of platformer it's customary to load another pallet of limestone on the player's back every so often, pursuing obscene difficulty at the expense of entertaining gameplay, but if you just accept dying sixty or seventy times per level as a fact of life – which, given the format, it really is – then completing the main campaign is by no means an overwhelmingly difficult feat. Quite an unfortunate sticking point for a game that seems specifically aimed at the kind of person who unleashes a strangled scream of anguish when they spill their morning coffee. Can you really criticise a game for not being deliberately frustrating? I suppose not, especially since I'm obliged to play through as much of it as I can.

What else? A few housekeeping issues, I suppose. While the game is kind enough to instantly reset you on death, without so much as an annoying animation or loading screen to tear you from the ceaseless flow of your attempts, it's in such a hurry to do so that it completely forgets to reset all the enemy positions along with you, making consistently building a routine – something that's practically a staple of masochistic trial-and-error platforming – just a little bit more inconvenient due to needing to manually reset every time via the menu. On the more technical side, the game completely neglects to save the sound settings, so if you're a massive wuss like me then you immediately have to make a beeline for the options menu to protect your delicate virgin ears every time you launch the game. I'm also one of those picky types who prefers to play platformers with a keyboard, and while the game will indeed allow this – giant 'GAMEPAD RECOMMENDED' intro screen notwithstanding – it won't let you rebind the default keys, a small issue magnified by the fact that X is jump and Z is dash, a configuration that goes against every single synapse in my Spelunky-addicted brain. And if you're going to recommend we use a gamepad for your elegant, tight, pixel-perfect platformer, why show a picture of the Xbox 360 controller? Have you used the D-pad on one of those things recently? It's like squashing your thumb into a fat person's nose and waggling it around.

Alright, alright, I really just wanted an excuse to rag on that D-pad. All facetiousness thrown aside, Fenix Rage is a perfect example of a game that succeeds by keeping its ambitions in check. By no means is it an extraordinary game: it utilises the simplest formula in the book, makes only a few very incremental changes, and even then, makes its fair share of blunders. That's alright though, you know? Not every game has to strive to be 'the next big thing' or 'the art'; sometimes it's better just to dump all that aspirational nonsense and concentrate on making a game that's just fun, responsive, and immaculately polished. That's what Fenix Rage has done. It lives forever in Super Meat Boy's shadow, but if you just want more challenging platforming injected straight into your veins then you can't do much better than this. Contrary to its title, it hasn't made me enraged at all; it has made me very, very happy.