ANTONBLAST fills every moment with cartoonish antics and compelling movement as you hurtle through its ridiculous platforming stages.
Satan is jealous of Anton’s gorgeous crimson skin tone, and so he has all of his moles steal your drinks. This, naturally, prompts you to rush out your front door and smash everything with a hammer. Which is probably the reaction of someone who should not be anywhere near alcohol, but it’s hard not to want to join Anton (or Annie – you have your choice of character and they work similarly) on their journey. A few moments spent bouncing, dashing, sliding, and cartoonishly pinging through these areas made for a game that was dangerously difficult to put down.
Anton/Annie can do many different attacks that preserve attack momentum or make you bounce/move faster. If you jump and attack with your huge hammer, you’ll do a flip that makes you bouncer higher when you hit the ground. Spin your hammer as you run and you’ll clobber enemies while picking up speed. It’s really intuitive and the levels all feel like they’re designed to encourage you to cut loose and see how fast you can string hits and bounces together. It makes you want to slam through these stages as fast as possible, and with the fun, animated attacks and motions of each movement, it’s just fun to watch the characters go through their actions. You really need to watch the trailer for this one as still screens don’t do the movement justice.
Getting back to the stages – they’re filled with inventive locales that give you many fun platforming activities while also inundating the player with humorous places and wild things to do. Rushing through a flaming sewer on an enraged swordfish is a heck of a way to end a stage (complete with a sharp-looking visual style just for this one part of the level) AND this is only the second stage. With its great movement, explosive and appealing animations, and its creative levels, ANTONBLAST is easily the best platformer I’ve played in ages and it isn’t even close.
ANTONBLAST will be made available tomorrow (December 3, 2024) on the Nintendo eShop and Steam.
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