Outside of Whomp ‘Em for the NES you
don’t see a lot of games with a Native American theme, so when Evolved Games
released Brave: The Search for Spirit Dancer for PS2 a few years ago it made a
small buzz among platformer fans for using Native American myths and legends as
the basis for some fairly solid platforming action. SouthPeak Interactive took
Evolved Games’ original creation to Collision Studios, who added to the game as
they brought it to the 360 as Brave: A Warrior’s Tale.
The game still tells the story
of a young Indian (the game’s term) named Brave, though in this new version,
Brave’s tale is a story being told by himself as an adult to a young child named
Courage. After controlling Courage briefly in the game’s new prologue, players
take control of Brave as he starts his quest to become a great warrior and
defeat the evil Wendigo beast that threatens his tribe.
Brave has to travel to the places of
his people’s myths to gain the strength he needs to save the day.
It feels like the team at
Evolved all got their degrees in Platform Game Design at Naughty Dog University
– the basic game structure is very similar to that of Jak and Daxter and its
sequels, and they even use the old Crash Bandicoot “player is running/being
chased toward the screen” routine. (Not that this is a bad thing; Naughty Dog’s
platformers are legendary for a reason.) Players will hop, double-jump, slide,
and fight their way through a sprawling 3D game world, facing an
increasingly-difficult series of discreet platforming challenges as they move
through a variety of locations.
It’s old-school 3D platforming
at its most basic, but the stages are cleverly designed and the action is fairly
fun. Brave’s got a few neat tricks in his repertoire, like being able to mimic
animal calls to bring wildlife to his aid. Nothing on display here is going to
leap out at you as incredibly compelling or captivating, but there’s some fun
stuff to do in a colorful, stylized world, and that’s enough to earn it a mild
‘thumbs up’ in my book.
Locations and enemies are diverse,
from the desert to the forest to the tundra.
All of this, though, only applies to
the content brought directly over from the PS2 edition. Sadly, the port process
has not been kind to little Brave. In bringing the game to the 360, Collision
Studios added some pretty terrible new content, and not a small number of bugs
and glitches. The new intro starts the whole thing off poorly; Courage doesn’t
control nearly as well as Brave, and it’s very possible (likely, even) to jump
through a wall and get stuck on the other side. At one point the character began
climbing out of the water with no input from me at all – even worse, I wasn’t
even near the shore. Courage climbed out of the water onto nothing, and of
course fell right back in the water.
Things get worse from there.
Provided that the intro sequence doesn’t turn you off the game entirely, you’ll
get into the main game – but instead of ending with the final boss fight like
the original, Brave’s story comes to a jarringly sudden end, at which point you
regain control of Courage and are tasked with gathering objects for elder Brave
before he finishes his tale. Courage’s second outing is just as awkward and glitchy as her first, and the platforming sequences she must traverse are the
game’s most frustratingly difficult. None of that clever-yet-possible stuff
here, these challenges are unfair, with too-tiny moving platforms you’re
repeatedly forced to navigate between.
Search for Spirit Dancer was a
cute, fun little throwback to a genre that has pretty much fallen out of favor
with the average gamer. While I admire attempts to bring that innocent style of gameplay to the modern generation, this is not the way to do it. If you must
have your Native-American-themed-platforming fix, you can probably find a PS2
copy of the original for about a quarter of the asking price for A Warrior’s
Tale. It’s worlds better than this churned-out retread would lead you to
believe.
Gameplay: 6.0
The 3D platforming is pretty
standard for the genre. You’ll hop from one crumbling platform to the next,
fight dangerous creatures with an array of simple moves, and take part in the
occasional unique sequence, like riding animals or spear fishing. The
moment-to-moment gameplay of Brave’s sequences are fairly fun (though bugs are
far more frequent than they should be), but the beginning and ending Courage
segments are frustrating, poorly designed, and ridiculously glitchy.
Graphics: 5.2
What was passable 3D on the PS2
looks remarkably bad once it’s been haphazardly shoehorned onto the 360.
Textures pop in and out of view, or warp as you walk closer and farther away.
The art style’s cute and colorful and the characters and enemies are usually
pretty interesting, but it simply looks outdated when it’s not actively broken.
Sound: 6.5
I was mildly impressed with the
quality of the voice acting, which isn’t terrible or annoying (with the
exception of Courage), but the tribal beats and repetitive sound effects wear
out their charm very quickly.
Difficulty: Medium
The game’s obviously designed with
kids in mind, so the challenge is pretty low. That said, the game’s technical
flaws can make things frustrating, and the final segment is full of cheap
platforming sections that require precision, timing, and too much luck.
Concept: 7.3
Native American myths are a unique
inspiration for the setting of a game. That said, the gameplay is pretty
standard for the genre.
Overall: 5.5
Brave is obviously designed with
children new to gaming in mind, but even they shouldn’t tolerate this glitchy
mess. There’s a pretty good game here, hiding amongst the bugs, graphical
issues, and poorly designed platforming sequences. It’s called Brave: Search for
Spirit Dancer, and you can find it for a very reasonable price for the PS2.
