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| | Genre: Puzzle & Trivia | | Min OS X: 10.5.8  CPU: G3 @ 700 MHz RAM: 128 MB Hard Disk: 40 MB Graphics: 32 MB VRAM |
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Okay, people. I’m not going to screw around here. I know you like to have a cute intro that sets a thematic tone and then eases you into the review proper, but you’re not going to get one here. I’m just going to jump right on into the first problem I have with the game just like this intro is jumping you right into… okay, so maybe you do get an intro. But now it’s over. I hope you’re happy.Brainpipe is a neat idea that is destroyed by a fatal gameplay flaw. The mouse control is no good. Considering that all you’re doing in the game is racing down a tunnel and dodging obstacles and collecting items, mouse control is pretty key, and it’s just plain bad in this title. The feel of guiding your reticule (which is oddly old-school blocky contrasted with the rest of the game’s future LSD funk look) around the screen is akin to driving a really old car with a steering wheel that sticks. It works great when you want to make big, sweeping movements. You just yank one way or the other and the vehicle lurches heavily in those directions. However, when you want to make your minute adjustments, you end up moving the wheel a bit… and nothing happens. So you move a little more, and nothing happens, and then you move again and WHAM! The car decides it’s time to jerk over and you hit that cop car parked against the curb. I feel like my control in Brainpipe is smooth along the outer edges of the circular pipe path I am traveling down, but in the center it feels like I’m watching a film with the frame rate cut in half. You can actually see your reticle jerk into place, instead of gliding smoothly. It feels like the movement is fighting me when I try to position things and it’s a feeling that becomes instantly maddening. It’s one thing to fail all by yourself in a game. You’ve earned that failure with your lame-osity. It’s yours. But when you feel the game has made you fail? Then it feels like the developers TOOK something from you. They somehow mock you from afar. You shake your fist at them, but the mocking continues. Let’s jump back to the start now. Let’s go Tarantino. You know how it ends, so now we go back to the start and unravel the meaning of it all. I think the Brainpipe peeps at Digital Eel would appreciate that method, too. Brainpipe is basically an avoidance game. You race down a path that winds back and forth, dodging out of the way of objects that pop up and collecting items for points as you go. The game is a psychedelic experience, which is fitting considering that the path you are meant to be traveling down is one into the depths of your own psyche. It’s an abstracted thing, obviously, but it’s effective. The mind is a tricky place, with a complexity that can be compared, without much exaggeration, to the universe itself. There is A LOT going on up there. As you travel, you navigate your way around the various obstacles while staring down a sort of circular reticule. You have a large outer circle and a small inner circle. The ring in between the two circles is segmented off, like pieces of pie. Your goal is to not have that center circle collide with any objects, and you line that circle up to collect power-ups. If you hit objects, your inner circle grows, making it more likely that you will strike other objects. Over time, if you avoid collisions, the inner circle will shrink back down to its original size.
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