Hero Express

This is another game I bought for contest reasons and I can safely say that it caused my week to feel a lot longer than it should have.

Hero Express is classed as a platformer but I’m not sure it is. You play as a hero fighting against giant monsters like King Kong and Godzilla… though these are Hero Express original monsters and in no way affiliated with the real King Kong or Godzilla.

Only, that’s not really the case. In reality you will be racing a vehicle of strange proportions that appears to be making some sort of delivery, across a geographically themed location collecting coins and gasoline to get to the end goal. There are eleven variants and that’s the entire game.

Each of the themed locations has its own vehicle and own set of currency that’s used to upgrade said vehicle. You cannot use currency from another level to upgrade a different vehicle – much like in real life where you can’t spend dollars in Britain… but who cares about real life when you are racing cartoon cars across horrible terrains.

This brings me on to my next point, it’s actually impossible to complete any of the levels on a first run because the cars are too shit to complete the courses. This doesn’t really matter too much as I’ll cover in the achievement section, but still it would have been nice to have the opportunity at a first pass so I could feel smug.

It’s a game I would class as a frustration raiser as, at times, it was infuriating to play. There was nothing worse than getting that perfect run going, setting a personal best only to hit a rock at slightly the wrong angle and come grinding to a halt. Even when the car was decently upgraded, some of the gasoline pickups were harsh and even a small mistake, or piece of bad luck, could cost you the run.

That said, it’s built this way for a reason. Each run can take up to 4 minutes so it’s not a lot of time and really does push that ‘just one more go’ mentality.

Looks and sound wise, it’s not winning any awards and I can guarantee that playing this game during sociable hours would have driven anyone in earshot mad with the sounds coming from the TV. The gameplay holds attention enough for this not to be an issue for the player but as far as others go, this is what the mute button was invented for.

Achievements – 1,000 Points – 26 Achievements

There are three elements to the game. The first is simply completing all the tracks which is fair enough really. This will net 12 achievements, one for each track and another for completing all tracks.

The second part consists of the miscellaneous ones of which there are three. One of these comes through normal gameplay and requires you to be airborne for a cumulative 40 seconds. The other two are for doing 10 backflips and 10 front flips respectively and this appears to only be possible on a few levels. The key is to only attempt one at time and take some time to work out which ramps get you enough height to perform the flips. It’s also important to land properly and sometimes they don’t count if you barely completed the flip.

The last eleven are for upgrading each of the vehicles to level 7 and this is where the game can fuck right off as it awards you more for being shit. Essentially if you get a good run and complete a level ‘early’ then you will have to play the level a lot more to get enough coins to upgrade the vehicle more. Arguably it takes the same amount of time regardless but when you don’t have a secondary goal to aim for, it makes the grind feel longer than it is.

Despite this moan and grind, the game can be completed in less than 8 hours so it only feels like a bad grind and that’s probably because the game becomes very repetitive when you have to race the same course over and over again.

Downloadable Content – N/A

I’ll admit that I did enjoy the first 20 minutes of each level of the game, but after that it got old quickly. The achievement list feels like more of a grind than it actually is due to this and it doesn’t offer much replay value when you’re done with the courses. That said, it’s relatively cheap with an RRP of £4.49 so might be worth the small investment.