I couldn’t help comparing this experience to that of Journey to the Savage Planet, which offers a similarly colorful world to explore under similar circumstances. It’s doubly frustrating that Rani constantly expresses her amazement at each new discovery, while the game’s systems refuse to reward my curiosity. This really seemed like an omission when I stumbled into an alien facility and only a couple of bits of furniture could be examined to tell me anything about the place. It’s strange that there aren’t even many different types of plants to scan beyond the opening sections, and that so many bizarre and potentially intriguing items can’t be scanned at all. I started to lose the exploration bug after a couple of hours, once I realized I wasn’t going to stumble on much that was genuinely fresh. The denizens of the gunk, meanwhile, only come in three flavors, and while their numbers grow towards the end, dispatching them is a one-dimensional task. These function as steps, ladders, and bridges to further ground (including one that looks ominously like a great unfurled tongue), but none have interesting properties beyond that. Suck up nearby gunk and colorful plants and mushrooms blossom. In many other ways, too, the stakes and the demands of your expedition hardly evolve until the game is on its final stretch, like a Zelda dungeon stuck in second gear. I lost count of how many times this trick is repeated throughout the game, and while sometimes there may be minor obstacles separating the two, often it’s simply a case of grabbing the seed and lobbing it at the target.
Early on, for example, you’re introduced to a species of seed that transforms into huge mushrooms if you throw it into an energy pool, enabling you to reach new areas. What at first feels like a rich proposition reveals its limitations surprisingly quickly. The problem is that it does start to feel like a job after a while, along with the rather workmanlike platform routines around it. It’s a shame then that the planet itself renders their adventure a little flat. The act of exploring is pushed and pulled between their two perspectives - a simple twist on an old formula that’s easy to appreciate. The Gunk is as much about the bond between this duo and their difficult situation as what they find. What could be a silent, Metroid-style dive into buried secrets thus becomes something slightly different. Wary of fieldwork, she stays with the ship, reminding Rani through her earpiece not to be reckless. Becks is practical and responsible, reluctantly assuming a maternal role. Impulsive and adventurous, she relishes the opportunity to dive into the local caves and shrubbery. Rani - the player character - is an excitable explorer. They’ve landed their rickety ‘Bunny’ spaceship on this uncharted world to seek out an energy source they detected from space, in the hope it might be valuable enough to pay off their mountain of debt.
Indeed, the game’s two main characters, partners Rani and Becks, have an almost parent and child-like relationship at times.
#THE GUNK XBOX ONE SERIES#
The only ledges Rani will grab are ones with yellow marks on them, and so it seems that the other ledges should've been made higher to be out of her reach because there's no real reason why she shouldn't be able to grab on to the other ledges beyond the developers didn't want her to.Platform(s): Xbox Series X, Xbox One, PC, Game Pass Throughout The Gunk, Rani will come across many ledges that she should clearly be able to grab on to, but arbitrarily can't. The Gunk wants players to complete its platforming challenges in a very specific way with no real room for experimentation, and this is best illustrated by its ledges. The Gunk players may also find themselves frustrated with the game's restrictive linearity.
So what happens when The Gunk players try to jump on these leaves too early is that Rani will simply fall right through them as though they weren't even there.
The Gunk players will soon learn to wait an extra second or two after doing this, though, as it takes a bit longer than expected for the game to register these leaves as platforms. Many puzzles in The Gunk revolve around throwing organic alien objects into glowing green pits to sprout large plants with leaves that players can use to reach new areas. While The Gunk is a mostly polished experience with little in the way of glitches or technical mishaps, there is an issue with some of the platforms in the game. The Gunk's short playtime is its biggest flaw, but it's not the only issue in the game.
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