Clustertruck is a game developed by Landfall games in 2016 for the PS4, PC, and Xbox One. It’s an insane game combining the rules of the floor is lava with the parkour gameplay of Mirror’s Edge. Of course, first-person platformers are usually a crapshoot with their controls, so is Clustertruck going to rise above its perspective or fall flat on its face? Let’s find out in my Mighty Review of… Clustertruck!

Let’s get on thing out of the way first, you will never find a game like Clustertruck anywhere else. It is a true original. The goal of the game is to get to the end of each stage by riding on the tops of semi trucks. If that sounds simple, it’s not. You’re not allowed to touch anything besides the trucks. No walls, obstacles, or the floor. And there are obstacles and pitfalls all over the place forcing you to jump from truck to truck to get to the end safely. One misplaced jump and you’re sent straight back to the beginning of the stage. If you manage to reach the goal, you’re given a score based on your speed, whether or not this is your first attempt, and how many tricks you performed along the way, such as jumping off a truck in mid air.

So, what is it about Clustertruck that makes it so much fun? Well to start things off, I really like the simplistic visual design. There are 9 worlds and each has its own unique theme. Be it forest, arctic, steampunk, or even hell itself, this game’s got some great environments. And this is helped out by the simple polygonal graphic style that keeps everything looking neat and tidy. And then there’s the fantastic music. It’s varied, fast-paced, and really great for getting the player amped up to take on whatever the game has to throw at them.

Moving onto the gameplay, we have 9 worlds with 10 stages each. Almost every stage throws a new gimmick or mechanic at the player, making for some super fun level variety. Everything loads almost immediately, which is good because anyone playing this game is sure to die a lot. And that’s not a bad thing since this game thrives on its gameplay style of if at first you don’t succeed, try try again. And again, and again. Over and over until finally beating the level. And if a level is too difficult, the player can always use the points they’ve earned to purchase new abilities in the shop. Two upgrades can be activated at a time and while some are certainly more useful than others, the only real downside is that some of them don’t have proper descriptions. For example, this one says I can do a midair flip, but it doesn’t tell me what that means in-game. So I give it a shot and didn’t notice a difference, so I honestly have no clue what it does. Still, I got to the end of the game using nothing but slow-mo and double jumping, so this wasn’t a major issue.

That being said, this game does have major issues. A lot of them. First, the game is completely physics-based, but the physics aren’t exactly great. I mean the trucks move fine, but certain things just don’t make sense. For example, if you fly into the back of a truck and jump against it, your character flies into the air, but if you jump off the side of a truck, you gain a ton of forward momentum. I’m not sure why this happens, but it can really screw up an otherwise perfect attempt at a level. Plus, the trucks and certain obstacles have randomized paths, leading to some frustrating deaths. While everything does follow a similar path through the level, their exact direction changes slightly with each new level attempt, and with this many trucks flooding the screen, this can mean chaos and occasionally no-win scenarios for the player. Also, your character has no body. This isn’t too bad since the game is in first-person, but I have no way of knowing how big the character’s hitbox is. There were many times when I hit a wall that wasn’t even on camera because the hitbox is bigger than the player’s view and other times I thought I had made it on top of a truck, but I was slightly off course and fell to my death. As if that’s not bad enough, I also managed to clip through the world a few times as well.

However, the biggest issue I have with this game is the controls. For most levels they’re fine- run, jump, powerups. Simple. But for the levels with a lot of lateral movement, the biggest problems with the controls shine through. Momentum can only be gained by running in the direction the camera is facing. Meaning that when the player moves left, right, or backwards the character will be really stiff and impossibly frustrating to handle. Thankfully, levels that require this kind of movement are few and far between, but I spent 7 hours playing through this game and two of them were strictly on the final level. If that doesn’t indicate a design problem, I don’t know what does. I’m sure these controls are fine on PC where the more precise mouse can move the camera easily, but on a console, it’s a complete pain in the ass. Oh, and the final boss needs checkpoints.

In the end, I had a ton of fun with Clustertruck. It’s crazy, fast-paced, and a lot of fun at its best, but at its worst it’s just frustrating, rage inducing, and poorly designed. But due to the game’s fast pace and lack of loading screens, these moments of frustration tend to be short-lived and if they were to update it with a level editor or PSVR support, I’d be more than happy to jump right back in. With that in mind, my final score for Clustertruck on the PS4 is… 7.5 truck nuts out of 10! Despite all of its flaws, this is still a damn fun game and well worth the price of admission, though it might not be worth the price of anger management therapy. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this review. If you did, be sure to leave a comment and let me know what I should review next. And subscribe to see more mighty reviews as well as next week’s Nifty Recipe based on this game. And as always, have a mighty nifty day today!