Axel & Pixel Review

Written by: Adam Tewkesbury Posted: 4th November 2009

Share:

Digg It

Drawing Conclusions...

Axel & Pixel Details:

	Action
	Xbox 360
	Silver Wish Games
	2K Games

Out Now

Axel & Pixel was the first game I've approached for a while with absolutely no preconceptions. Arriving on live arcade with little fanfare and no noticeable previews in the gaming press I genuinely had no idea what to expect, which was surprisingly liberating. Console downloads have provided a great opportunity for lower budget titles to sneak into our living rooms, and with some real quality appearing amongst the extensive quantity of games released, I was happy to have a go without any bias.

Looking for all the world like a 2D platformer, the first big surprise is that the player actually controls a sparkly cursor, tasked with the job of hovering over items in each level and clicking to activate their (sometimes fairly random) qualities. This in turn opens the way for the hero, Axel, and his fat dog Pixel, who are hot on the heels of a pink rat that has stolen their house keys and taken them into a sinister parallel dimension. Blurring the line between inspiration and hallucination, it would be interesting to know what the designers had ingested before dreaming the whole thing up, but there is a consistent charm to the way the world is presented that makes progressing to the next screen that little bit more compelling.

Right from the off the art style makes quite an impression, with animation reminiscent of a Monty Python sketch that similarly succeeds in being simplistic, eerie and amusing. Neither Axel (a beret wearing artist) nor his pet are particularly original characters to play with, but their interactions with the environment and each other are nicely realised and aim successfully at extracting sympathetic ahh’s, ooh’s and the occasional chuckle. Slowly but surely the game charms you into caring about them, to a much greater degree than a lot of the respawning characters you might have become accustom to playing and all the more surprising as it seems pretty much impossible for either dog or owner to come to any real harm.

It should be so easy to dismiss Axel & Pixel as an oddity, a throwback, and a bit of a waste of time. The way the cursor lights up over interactive objects reduces large parts of the game to simply scanning across the environment and clicking at random until something happens, reducing interaction to the bare minimum. Despite this, the peculiar logic of a lot of the puzzles (open a flower to distract a bee; play a skeleton’s ribs like a xylophone so that the vibrations make it collapse) is strangely compulsive, and as each level is only a screen or two wide there is a satisfying feeling of completion when you decide to move on to the next. Every few levels (of which there are 24 in total) a more interactive sequence is introduced- piloting a hot air balloon, a jeep, and a sailing boat- and a few sections involve familiar game mechanics including some rhythm action and the almost inevitable quick time events. There isn’t anything particularly new on show, but this is an 800 point gaming morsel rather than a wallet-bothering blockbuster, and everything works as it should without throwing anything in that might threaten to stop you in your tracks.

There is some wider ethereal quality at work here too. Axel and Pixel should be bad, shouldn’t hold your attention, and should be instantly forgettable. And yet, once you start playing, it is likely that you’ll see the (admittedly pretty short) game through to the end. More, people passing as you play are likely to be equally drawn in, immediately providing their help and tips and enjoying the light-hearted presentation almost as much as the player. Hardened action gamers might not grant it a second glance, but Axel & Pixel is a game for a much wider audience; even my game-hating wife was drawn in, younger kids could comfortably see it though, and cynical old gamers might be surprised at the impact such a simple selection of well-worn parts can have. This, possibly, is Axel & Pixel’s greatest success- anyone can play it, and most would probably enjoy it if they did.