1. 3D Power Drift
3DS2. Maze Hunter 3-D
3DS3. Hyrule Warriors Legends
3DS4. Icarus Proudbottom's World of Typing Weekly
PC5. Paper Mario
N646. Catherine
PS37. Glover
N64 *NEW*
Glover
I'm a big fan of 5th gen gaming. In the eyes of many retro gamers, it's the generation that's aged the worst, with many citing ugly graphics, poor controls and clunky cameras as being reasons they just don't like the early days of 3D any more. Well, personally, I don't find those issues to be that major in most of the defining games of the era. Mario 64, Rayman 2, Banjo-Kazooie, Night into Dreams, Crash Bandicoot - honestly I find all of those games have their flaws, but ultimately they still generall control well, look quite nice and I enjoy playing them a lot. 5th gen hasn't aged nearly as badly as people say.
Maybe those people who dislike the 5th gen of gaming have played Glover recently though.
Glover is a 3D platformer, the de facto genre of gen 5. You play as an anthropomorphic magic glove. The story goes that there is a kingdom protected by the 7 magic stones which adorn it's castle. A wizard in the castle is brewing a potion, but something goes wrong and it explodes. The wizard is turned to stone, his magic gloves go flying off, the magic stones fall off the castle, and one of the gloves falls in the potion and turns evil. The nice glove casts a spell on the magic stones to turn them into rubber balls and stop them smashing on the ground, and then has to gather them all to return the land to peace, whilst saving the wizard and defeating the evil glove in the process.
Glover takes place over 6 worlds with 3 levels and a boss fight a piece. There's also a bonus level in each world that requires you to gather all the 'caribs' in each level of the world to unlock - they're basically this game's equivalent of coins or rings. In each main stage you must roll your ball past the obstacles of the level to the exit, solving puzzles and passing challenges along the way whilst keeping both yourself and the ball intact.
The controls for manipulating the ball are quite intricate. You can roll it, bounce it, slap it at a low angle along the ground, throw it forwards, lob it upwards, bounce on top of it, walk on it to roll it across water, and transform it into different types of ball. The basic ball is a rubber ball which is bouncy and light. It floats on water, bounces after a drop, can be bounced to reach higher ledges, and is fairly easy to control over light ground. You'll use it 90% of the time. You can also transform it into a bowling ball, which can be slapped into obstacles or enemies to damage them and sinks underwater, but is hard to control, and very heavy to push up slopes. A third form is a ball bearing, which is easy to control and sinks underwater too, but doesn't bounce and can't smash obstacles. The final form is the magic gem, which doubles points obtained when grabbing caribs, but smashes in a single hit, or after dropping off a ledge. This form is worthless and shouldn't be an option.
The problem with the intricacy of Glover's controls are the button mappings. Every button does a ton of different things and not always with consistent results. For example, A is jump normally, but when rolling the ball, A will lob it upwards. Unless you hold A, in which case it will slap it across the ground. How do you jump with the ball? B, which bounces the ball. Unless you hold it, in which case it throws the ball. If you hold B off of the ball, Glover will point to where the ball is so you can find it. Z lets go of the ball if you're rolling it, lies down to dodges explosive blasts if you are still and off the ball, cartwheels through small gaps if you#re running and off the ball, and ground pounds in midair. R changes your balls forms if you're on the ball, but shoots spells if you have one and you're off the ball. If you're off the ball you can change the ball form by holding B and pressing R. If you jump on the ball, you'll grab it and roll it as usual, but if you double jump on the ball, you'll stand on top of it and roll it, but your controls are reversed. Ground pounding the ball will knock it flying, but standing on the ball and THEN ground pounding will give you a big bounce to get to higher ground... and godammit, it's complicated. The ground pound thing cost me a ton of deaths especially. You get my point right? The controls are intricate, but they don't feel natural. Some decisions are particularly bizarre, like switching the 'jump' button when you grab the ball. It makes it so that sometimes obstacles become more complicated than they should be because you're fighting to get the controls to do the simple action you want them to.
Glover does have some fun level design ideas. The worlds are all generic platformer themes, although they go with some slightly less basic ideas (there's no 'ice', 'forest' and 'lava', but instead 'atlantis', 'pirate', 'circus', 'castle', 'prehistoric' and 'space'). The obstacles they used are often inventive and fun, and there are some clever ideas about how to use the ball mechanics. I loved the ice level where the ball would build into a snowball as you rolled it. Glover can sometimes grab potions which give him powers - some make him huge and powerful, one allows him to run super fast, some let him shoot spells to turn enemies into frogs, one makes him turn into a helicopter, and one turns the ball into a giant, super bouncy beach ball. When the game lets you use this stuff, it's great, but sadly somewhat underutlised.
The problem with Glover is that despite some good level design, the controls just aren't suited for it. You'll lose the ball in stupid ways a lot of time, and sometimes it feels unfair. Check points are often before difficult segments, which seems nice until you clear that segment and die again, making you have to do the whole thing again. Enemies are universally awful, with many being invincible, and a lot of them attacking the ball rather than you and knocking it flying. I found I tended to stun the enemy and then push them off the cliff into a bottomless pit, as it was normally the only realistic way to proceed.
Glover also has some issues with a lack of polish. Enemies continue to attack you whilst cutscenes play for example, and I've had issues where the ball has gotten stuck or similar whilst playing. Some level mechanics seem to have been designed in a way that requires perfect positioning, but don't justify it - it's not challenging, it just feels liuke the level needed more playtesting.
Graphically, Glover is underwhelming. It looks a lot like an early PS1 game in terms of it's low poly count, and the N64 (and the PS1 for that matter) could definitely do a lot better. The N64 fog is real, especially on the hub world, so don't be fooled by all these emulated screenshots I've nicked from the internet - it certainly won't look that clean unless you're playing on one of those Ultra HDMI modded N64s. It's music is solid though, if not especially memorable. It's catchy enough that you'll hum along as you play, but a day after finishing it I'm struggling to remember any tunes.
Glover is a mediocre game that constantly feels like it should have been a good one. Unfortunately, the over complex controls just don't marry up with the level design in a way that makes the experience fun. Instead, it's just a source of frequent frustration, and despite it's scant 5 hours or so running time, I was glad to be done with this one. I'd skip it.
