GRAPPIN Review (Xbox One) - XboxAddict.com

STAFF REVIEW of GRAPPIN (Xbox One)

Wednesday, July 24, 2024.
by Adam Dileva

Small indie games sometimes surprise me. I might expect one thing but get another. This was the case with GRAPPIN, a climbing game that looked quite basic and simple from its few screenshots, but had me gripped, at least, right until the end. Get ready to reach new heights and aim that grappling hook, as you’re going to need to practice your platforming in this first person adventure. Simple idea, but a surprising amount of challenge, just don’t expect to be swinging around as nimble as Spider-Man.

You are awoken in a cave by a mysterious voice, unsure where you are. There’s only one way out and forward, so you follow it. Here you learn how to move and jump, eventually being rewarded with a special piece of equipment called The Grip. The Grip is essentially a grappling hook, but can be shot out at a high velocity and will pull you to where it anchored to, much like Batman. Trick is, you can only grapple and hook onto special clay blocks.

Exiting the cave, you’re greeted to an open and beautiful field full of trees, cliffs and a waterfall in the background. You’re not given any direction other than you must make your way to the Grip Shrine, a far mountain in the distance to return The Grip. So you set off on your journey, unsure where to initially go. This is how you start to explore the world around you, simply seeing where you can or can’t go with your new way of traversal.

When you see the clay blocks and boards you can grapple onto, you know that’s probably a way you’ll need to explore, and while you’re not stuck on a linear path, you won’t be able to progress to the next area/chapter until you’ve found a set amount of Relics that unlock the next area.

As you make your way up the mountain from area to area, you’ll reach new heights, overcome new obstacles, and explore outdoor woodlands, underground lava caves, and blizzard peaks. Your adventure begins out simple enough, grappling from one spot to the next, eventually needing to link your grapples from one to the next in succession. There’s even a dedicated button to perform a 180 degree turn for when you need to quickly turn around mid-air.

Since GRAPPIN is played in first person, you’ll have a constant reticule in the middle of your screen, though it’s always rotating and spinning, so it can be a bit distracting at times. The reticule is white the majority of the time, but when you’re close enough to grapple onto the clay, it’ll be yellow so that you know you’re in range. There’s an option to turn on aim assist, which is normal for console games, but it's broken at times here, locking you on to the clay grapple block, unable to move the cursor away, causing me to turn it off momentarily to look elsewhere.

Many times you’ll need to run and jump so that you can get close enough to grapple on a far distant platform, and sometimes you’ll have to simply make sure you don’t fall off a thin walkway, or jump over moving lasers. You’ll always be looking for the grapple points along the map, as that’s generally the way you’ll want to go, but there’s many times you’ll have to go slightly off the main path to find hidden relics.

Relics are the golden skulls you’ll need to find to progress. Each area has a set amount you’ll need to find, most of which are mandatory before you can get through an impassable barrier, though there are some relics that are optional. You’ll naturally find these at times, as they are generally in obvious out-of-the-way places, but with a button press, you can get a list of the Relics in a stage, each of which all have a clue as to where they are in the level. Examples of this may be “In between four pillars”, or “On top the highest peak”. The clues give just enough description to set you in the right direction, but vague enough to not be too blatantly obvious. I better hint system or arrow would have been helpful at times when I've been stuck for a half hour unable to find the last relic.

Some levels are quite large, sometimes vertically, so it can be frustrating when you’ve been searching nearly everywhere for a relic and unable to find it. With more than fifty relics to find, you’ll be scouring each area to find each. In certain sections your Grip will be upgraded into the Trace Grip. This removes any distance limitations and you’re able to grapple right across the map if you can hover over a clay spot with your cursor. These sections are far and few in between, but are the highlight as you swoop through the air to any distance.

Physics are a bit wonky at the best of times, as you do this small little float once you grapple into your target, and jumping is quite floaty as well. You can imagine how this works out when you’re trying to make precise jumps in first person. I was able to deal with the floaty controls, but that was until I got to the absolutely awful second to last level.

This stage has you losing your Grip, so you have to make a bunch of jumps simply running and jumping. I was quite enjoying myself in each stage, challenging myself to find each relic, slowly making my way higher and higher. The last two levels were so awful, it really killed all my enjoyment I had before it. Trying to land jumps in first person while using momentum just doesn’t work well, and being forced to do so in a whole level caused so much frustration that I didn’t want to even continue. While I did progress and finally see the credits roll, I did quite enjoy the twist ending, but I don’t think many will have the patience to get through the last few levels.

Visuals are quite simple with basic geometry, but each biome adds a new aesthetic and tone to keep things interesting. The first few levels were the most beautiful, as I found the others more confined or having to concentrate intently on making my grapple shots instead of admiring the views. The soundtrack is mellow and fits the gameplay, composed by Benoit Malis.

GRAPPIN gets more difficult as you progress, though not always intentionally, as I would fall to my death multiple times due to floaty controls or missing my jumps because of the first person view. It’s a shame GRAPPIN loses all its good faith and momentum with the awful final stages, though I’m still glad to have played through it for that gripping and intriguing ending.

**GRAPPIN was provided by the publisher and reviewed on an Xbox Series X**

Overall: 7.0 / 10
Gameplay: 7.0 / 10
Visuals: 7.0 / 10
Sound: 7.0 / 10

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STAFF REVIEW of GRAPPIN (Xbox One)

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