Featured Article
Despite a promise by Microsoft that Xbox Live Arcade games would provide new casual game experiences for a console audience, the large majority of games for the service have been ports of arcade classics like Pac-man or popular PC casual games like Zuma Deluxe. So it's nice to see a game like Cloning Clyde that brings an original experience that is well-suited to the console.
The game focuses on Clyde, a somewhat-dull test patient at a somewhat-mad scientific research facility. As the victim of a cloning experiment gone bad, the original Clyde suddenly finds himself as one of hundreds of clones trapped throughout the lab. Tired of this shabby treatment, the original Clyde decides to free, er, himself and break out of the maniacal lab.
As you might expect from this story, controlling the various Clyde clones is integral to finding paths through the maze-like levels and destroying the security machines that block your escape. By constantly switching between Clydes you can reach areas and activate devices that would be closed to a single Clyde. The controls for switching are unintuitive and hard to get used to, but the mechanic makes for some mildly interesting brain-benders.
Multiple Clydes aren't the game's only unique puzzle-solving feature. Special cloning machines can also make Clyde merge his DNA with various animals, granting him their powers for the remainder of the level. You'll change into everything from a flying chicken-Clyde, to a swinging monkey-Clyde and even an explosive barrel-Clyde to complete certain levels, and the morphing adds some much needed variety to the simple run-and-jump gameplay.
Unlike other platform games like the Mario series, the focus here is on puzzle-solving, not on enemy-pounding. While early levels are depressingly linear and pretty easy to blaze through, later levels present some true stumpers, requiring quick wits and quick reflexes to get through.
The main problem with Cloning Clyde is that it ends before its able to show off its full potential. Just when you start to get used to the game's unique mechanics and the puzzles begin to get more challenging, you find yourself escaping from the game's 24th and final level. There are a few challenge levels to complete after you finish the main game, but these unlocked challenges are not especially different than the main game.
The game's puzzles, while interesting, never seem to fully utilize all of Clyde's various abilities, which keeps them from being truly clever. Perhaps expecting more than a simple diversion from a $10 game is unfair, but I get the feeling that the game's design could support a much more robust game than these levels allow. A potential sequel could solve this problem.
While it lasts, Cloning Clyde is a graphically rich, moderately-challenging puzzle game. It's not the type of game that you'll play obsessively for months, but it does provide a nice enough diversion for a few hours, and is definitely worth the $10 asking price.