Each era is divided into small levels where Colon will have to work together in order to survive the dangers and platforms that exist throughout the worlds. From the hieroglyphics of the early age to the classic Gothic era to the futuristic stylings of Pixel fonts, there is a long illustrious history of fonts to explore. You’re much better off staring at some of its screenshots for the 90 minutes or so it would take you to beat the game, because seeing something that looks so wonderful fall apart so badly is just infuriating.In Type:Rider, you control two dots (which I will hereby refer to collectively as Colon) as they travel through a variety of different worlds that represent different typefonts. In other words, Type:Rider undoubtedly has the noblest of intentions, but as a platformer, it sucks. (Note: as far as I can tell, it does this intentionally once the rest of the times are just there to confuse and annoy you.) On this last point, the game occasionally decides that forward movement is for chumps, and sends you in the opposite direction from which you’re trying to go. You can rotate your dots to build forward momentum in mid-air, except for all those times when rotating sends you flying backwards. The camera follows your journey, except for the times when it suddenly decides to stay frozen in one spot, forcing you to reset the level. Water represents an impenetrable sludge that’s sure to slow you down, except when it doesn’t. Likewise, you can wall jump upwards to reach higher ledges, but your success here, too, will rely on the game feeling charitable towards your efforts. Jumping from one ledge to another is frequently equal parts skill and luck, with success dependent entirely on whether Type:Rider’s wonky physics agree with what you’re hoping to do. In the actual levels, however, it’s not so simple. In theory, the two dots are supposed to move in tandem with each other, and when you see it work as it’s supposed to during the tutorial, it seems pretty straightforward. Trying to manoeuvre them around the screen is awkward at the best of times. Not that the characters - who, it must be noted, are either a colon or a pair of periods, depending on your point of view - move much better when the game isn’t slowing down. Type:Rider’s platforming occasionally veers into “demanding” territory, and it becomes outright impossible when your characters start moving as if they’ve been doused in molasses. While I certainly don’t object to getting a better chance to look at some of these environments, I’m quite certain that’s not what the game’s developers intended. For one thing, the game is prone to slowdowns, at least on the Vita. Until, that is, things start moving, and the effect gets diminished drastically. It pops off the screen, and it looks as good as anything I’ve seen this year. This means you get jazzy, retro-futuristic worlds that look like the fever dream of an art director at Sterling Cooper in Helvetica, or you go deep into the early days of writing with Gothic, complete with chanting monks. It looks and sounds amazing, taking fonts like Times New Roman, Garamond, and Futura (among others) and turning them into entire worlds, complete with relevant soundtracks. In fact, I’ll even take that a step further, and say that, on a purely superficial level, I love Type:Rider itself. sans serif (sans serif forever!), sign me up! I’m certainly not going to object to a game teaching me about the origins of the written word. A game about the history of fonts? As someone with an opinion on serif vs.
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