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Tkeyboard climber 27/20/2023 I hope that I meet or exceed the expectations of these climbers, and I thank all of you who have encouraged me to keep writing. Given the wealth of positive feedback on my previous books, I decided to accept this challenge and spend a year exercising my fingers on a keyboard. The impetuses for writing this “exercise guide” were the many climbers, from around the world, who have urged me to write a book focusing solely on physical exercise training. If the controls and camera were improved and the game didn’t instantly end when you let go of something, it would be a significantly better experience.Training for Strength, Power, Endurance, Flexibility, and Stability. What I got was a QWOP-esque game full of frustrations that ultimately feels a little half-baked. It is no secret that I like climbing games: Grow Up and Grow Home are two of my favourite games and so when I saw City Climber I was excited to have a go at someone else’s idea of a physics based climber. I found this a bit odd though, because when one player passed a level it moved on to the next one - even if nobody else had played it. This is achieved through a “Pass the Controls” system, where each player takes it in turn to complete a mission. Personally, I found these to be very shallow and boring to play on my own, though there is the option to play with up to four local players. It’s not like they didn’t program in the gravity and ragdoll collisions either: there are several party games included which revolve entirely around controlled falling. This becomes all the worse in the set levels of City Climber because you end up climbing up the same section repeatedly. To me, this goes against what I enjoy so much in climbing games: I love having to fix my own mistakes without completely restarting everything. There is no falling in the main missions, just instant failure. This is so frustrating, mainly because the game gives you no way to save yourself. Not being attached to a wall, you see, is an instant failure so letting go of the wall with the lone hand you’re left holding on with can cause you to lose all progress. There is an audio cue for when your arm has attached to a surface, but it only plays when you’re no longer controlling it and if you want to get fast times - something the game prompts you to do - it can result in instant failure. ![]() The camera stays pretty far out at a 45 degree angle to the character, which makes it very difficult to see where your arms actually are. ![]() With both a controller and keyboard/mouse it was so difficult to make the arms go exactly where you want them to go, and the camera angle doesn’t help either. This is a similar control scheme to other games in the genre, but in City Climber I found it to be incredibly clunky and unintuitive. The art style suits the game’s simplicity as you are only able to move one arm at a time. The levels are all focused on a single building, with the design being particularly minimalist. This is completed with a full physics system, where you have to move one arm at a time to move forwards - or upwards. Have you ever wanted to climb a building? City Climber gives you a chance to climb up any surfaces with Spider-Man levels of grip, playing as a blocky man who is given a variety of tasks that all involve climbing buildings. Reviews // 27th Jun 2017 - 6 years ago // By Jinny Wilkin City Climber Review
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