Wield Godlike Power in Harold, a Playable Saturday Morning Cartoon

“My goal is to create a downloadable game with the quality of a triple-A game.”

Sure, like I haven’t heard a game developer tell me that a thousand times before. But for Moonspider Studios CEO Loris Malek, he’s taking aim at his goal by somewhat nontraditional gaming means: he’s hired a team of the most talented 2D animators he can find and is creating a Don Bluth cartoon that happens to be playable with a controller.

Yes, animation has been given top priority in Harold, a sidescrolling platformer where you control a veritable doofus. See, you’re a guardian angel’s apprentice, and in order get your people-protecting Master’s degree, as it were, you must complete the final exam in which you steer the clumsy Harold through timed obstacle runs where pratfalls and dangers constantly befall him.

The obstacle course also happens to be a race against other sad-sack mortals, however, so you’re competing with your fellow guardian angel apprentices for the top finish times. As such, you’ll need to egg Harold on with divine bolts of lightning, sabotage other racers, and use your godlike powers to look ahead in the race and clear a path for Harold as he ignorantly runs toward certain death.

And prepping the course for a smooth run is all you need to worry about, big job though it may be, as you don’t actually control Harold’s movements outside of jumping. Like the 2009 LucasArts platformer Lucidity, the stage is constantly advancing and you can’t stop it. Your job is to make sure Harold doesn’t kill himself, thereby causing you to flunk your guardian angel SAT.

Things start simply enough, but before long you’ll be constantly juggling hazards and looking for any shortcut you can in order to shave precious seconds off of Harold’s time. Gators ahead in a river you need to traverse? Give ‘em a holy whack on the noggin with your divine hammer. Is Harold nervously tiptoeing across a teetering plank bridge? Give him a nudge forward by pulling the bridge tight at each end and then release it to rubber-band snap the young man into gear. A total of four worlds – desert, jungle, beach, and snow – house multiple stages each, adding up to a pre-replayability total of about 6-8 hours of gameplay.

And as for those animations? You truly have not seen a video game look like this since…well, ever. “I wanted to make the first game that would look like a Walt Disney movie,” Malek says enthusiastically.

It shows. Film-quality cartoon cutscenes form the introductory sequence, finale, map introductions, and even mid-race moments. Harold is one game where you’re not likely to want to skip any of the cutscenes. Now that would be a divine miracle.

Ryan McCaffrey is the Executive Editor at IGN Xbox. He used to own a DeLorean, which is weird. Follow him on Twitter, on IGN, catch him on Podcast Unlocked, and drop-ship him Taylor Ham sandwiches from New Jersey whenever possible.

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The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes - "Ultron Unlimited" Review

Warning - full episode spoilers follow.

The problem with Ultron is that, no matter how many times you pound him into scrap metal, he always returns in a new body and with a new plan for wiping out humanity. The Avengers learned that the hard way in this week's episode of Earth's Mightiest Heroes. "Ultron Unlimited" picked up where "Behold... the Vision!" left off a few weeks ago, as the robotic villain sought to replace the Avengers with his own, "perfected" Synthezoid Avengers. Unfortunately, "Ultron Unlimited" turned out to be the first instance where the show's new, largely standalone approach to episodic storytelling took its toll.

The problem is that the idea of the real Avengers battling their evil replacements is a little too familiar coming so close on the heels of the Skrull invasion saga. Hawkeye even seemed to point out that fact when he quipped, "Just so we're clear, I'm the real me." That brief moment of levity didn't do much to spice up the conflict, however. Even Vision's fight scenes felt strangely diminished, as the character was far from the unstoppable powerhouse he was in his first appearance. Chalk it up to his conflicted feelings on his mission, I suppose. The best that could be said for the action in this episode is that, like in "Assault on 42", the fact that the Avengers were fighting inhuman opponents allowed them to be more brutal and decisive in combat than animated superhero shows typically allow. The rampant battling was entertaining enough, just not particularly noteworthy.

The focus on Avenger vs. Avenger brawling meant that Ultron himself was largely relegated to being a backseat player. We were never given a clear idea of what Ultron's larger goal was beyond swapping the Avengers out for Synthezoids.It was cool to see the team eventually unite to battle Ultron in his all new, all adamantium shell, but by that point the episode had too little running time left to take advantage of the scenario. And while Vision's evolution from uncaring soldier to would-be human was engaging, it could have been fleshed out and expanded upon. That's to say nothing of Jocasta, who played so little role in the episode it's enough to wonder why she was introduced at all. I don't know if she's intended to return before the end of the season, but if she does, hopefully the writers will actually do something with her and her relationship to the Pym family.

"Ultron Unlimited" was at its best when it focused on that family dynamic and Ultron's Oedipal relationship with his "mother," Janet. It's too bad Hank didn't make his long-awaited return here, because there's plenty of good material to mine with these characters. A script that downplayed the Avengers and devoted more time to Ultron's efforts to both please and supplant his father would have worked a lot better. Sadly, as far as I'm aware, this was Ultron's final appearance for the remainder of Earth's Mightiest Heroes. The most we can do is hope that Avengers Assemble takes a slightly more dark and psychological approach to the character.

Jesse is a writer for IGN Comics and IGN Movies. He can't wait until he's old enough to feel ways about stuff. Follow Jesse on Twitter, or find him on IGN.

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