Game Reviews

Chop Chop Caveman

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Chop Chop Caveman

If you’ve ever woken up craving a slab of bacon, you can appreciate the single-minded obsession for food in Chop Chop Caveman.

An appealing combination of brightly coloured graphics and classic platforming gameplay, it's the sort of lighthearted fare that should whet any gamer's appetite.

It's too bad that the tasty gameplay is peppered with unpredictable controls that may have you reaching for antacid.

The meat of the game

The goal is to hunt down dinosaurs and roast their remains for dinner. Hunting and gathering is not as easy as it sounds, especially in landscapes scattered with bottomless ravines and man-eating vegetation waiting to turn you into plant food.

Survival is based on running, jumping, killing, and figuring out clever puzzles that let you conquer obstacles and enemies.

Three hearts on the screen afford you as many lives. You can earn new lives and higher scores by eating meat or killing enemies. Collecting pebbles and gems throughout your journey also increases your score.

20 levels divided among four environments - Jungle, Boneyard, Swamp, and Volcano - offer plenty of variety, even if it's of the predictable sort. Hidden veggies, veiled obstacles, and hard to reach gems keep things interesting. Boss fights at the end of each world with dangerous beasts called things like Wade and Carl add to the fun, too.

A bittersweet treat

Unlike most carefree platformers, Chop Chop Caveman eschews the fast-paced approach for a more deliberate pace. Since hunting dinos relies more on strategy than straight pummeling, the slower pace and progress is an acquired taste.

This isn’t necessarily a negative, but the irksome control scheme is. Regions of the screen are cordoned off for different actions. For example, hold a finger to the bottom of the screen and you're able to move left or right, whereas tapping triggers a jump or attack depending on the context.

It's an imprecise setup ill-fitted to the gameplay. The game regularly mistakes your input, resulting in early death. This is particularly frustrating because dying means starting over again at the beginning of the level.

While it's hard not to love Chop Chop Caveman for its charming graphics and wonderfully realised prehistoric world, it's equally difficult to put up with a platform with such poorly conceived controls.

Chop Chop Caveman

An adorable prehistoric romp, Chop Chop Caveman has sharp, modern graphics and clunky, stone age controls
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