REVIEW – Patient people with big brains will get the most out of “Big Hops”

The best platforming games usually a have a fantastic sense of momentum during traversal, creating a feeling of nonstop action. Other stalwarts in the genre replace that momentum with weapons and power ups that help make the impossible seem possible. Big Hops does a little of both in very enjoyable ways, but its focus on puzzles heavily bogs down the experience.

The best platforming games usually have a fantastic sense of momentum during traversal, creating a feeling of nonstop action. Other stalwarts in the genre replace that momentum with weapons and power-ups that help make the impossible seem possible. Big Hops does a little of both in very enjoyable ways, but its focus on puzzles heavily bogs down the experience.

Luckshot Games’ Big Hops puts you in control of Hop, a cute and curious little frog in a little forest looking for adventure. While playing and bouncing around with his younger sister, he gets lost and finds a frog shrine that encourages him to seek out a bunch of totems in exchange for the opportunity to find adventure. This ends up being a cool tutorial for things to come. When Hop quickly gathers those totems, he gets transported to The Void, a place of dark nothingness.

He then learns that he was brought there by this seemingly menacing being named Diss, who unsurprisingly spends a lot of the game dissing him (which also ends up being a theme). Anyway, Diss needs Hop’s help finding “Dark Drips” (essentially this game’s version of stars/moons/golden bananas) hidden in different areas in order to save the universe by repairing the voidstream. On top of that, Hop also enlists the help of a technician who can help him get home provided Hop can bring him the necessary airship parts. Believe it or not, saving the universe or simply going home is actually pretty much the choice here in what’s typical platforming story nonsense.

At first glance, Big Hops looks and plays like a traditional 3D platformer. After rolling credits in a little more than 10 hours of gameplay, it’s really more of a puzzle platformer, and that’s an aspect that, unfortunately, makes this game divisive. 

In my review in progress, I mentioned when I first got my hands on Big Hops at an event last year, the half hour I spent with what ended up being the game’s intro was incredibly fun. This was a game I encouraged other writers to pick up first. I wanted more, and now that I’ve gone through the whole thing, it just isn’t what I hoped it would be. If I had to compare Big Hops to anything, it’s a Zelda-lite with Mario movement. If you asked me what it was last year, I’d say it was a Mario game with Zelda-lite puzzles, simply based on the first part of the game. Eventually, you find that it becomes formulaic to a fault. Not including The Void, Big Hops has four main areas. There’s the forest where the game begins, and you learn how to move, a western-themed desert where you make your way through a mobster hideout, an island where you have to shut down an ocean rig led by a corporate overlord, and a cliff and graveyard-themed world with mine cart puzzles and segments that defy all sorts of physics. Every time you arrive at a new world, you meet the locals and learn about different problems that affect their world at large. Solving these problems is often a matter of seeking out certain NPCs, having something related to the plot happen (like getting thrown into jail at the desert), and then navigating a dungeon level that usually involves a three-part fetch quest or three-faceted puzzle that results in you finding an airship part that brings you one step closer to getting home.

Quickly getting back to the Mario and Zelda comparisons, I talked about Dark Drips being stars. The airship pieces are pretty much the Triforce and are essentially what leads you to actual progression, so the golden path that leads to the end credits revolves around you getting those airship parts. However, with the ship parts being the main means to an end, I found myself not caring about the Dark Drips; this is unfortunate because it’s getting these drips that provides most of the meat and actual enjoyment. 

There are two reasons why I felt this way, and they’re really due to my own preferences and expectations. First, I’ll talk about gameplay. Using Hop feels amazing, and if you’re familiar with the genre, his abilities just make sense. He has a simple jump, a high jump, a dive, the ability to climb, and a talented tongue (more on this later). 

Maneuvering Hop feels like using Mario and Cappy in Mario Odyssey. He has both basic and more complex movements you have access to right off the bat, and the game gives you a lot of freedom to be creative with his arsenal. Going through different areas and thinking about how you’re going to get to different places is a lot of fun.

Adding even more variety are the fruits and vegetables you’ll find on your journey. You can eat them to replenish health, or you can throw them into the environment and make use of their different abilities. Mushrooms turn into trampolines, acorns thrown at the wall can turn into climbable vines that won’t affect your stamina, cactus balls can turn into tightropes you can bounce on and off of, chili peppers can burn dry grass to open up previously enclosed areas, and more. The best thing about all these items is you can save them in your backpack for later. 

That all sounds great, right? What’s the problem? Traversal becomes too reliant on these items, and a lot of the main campaign becomes less about the fun of using Hop and more about planning how you’ll get from point A to point B. Early on in the Duster Bluffs level, you’ll have these floating fruit that you can lash on to leap to high and far areas, and like most of the fruit abilities in the game, you’ll have to go through a lot of trial and error to figure out the most effective ways to use them, and this is what slows things down. I often found myself in situations where these segments and puzzles overstayed their welcome, and there was nothing I could do about it because they were essential to progression.

The game also mixes things up with hidden challenge levels you’ll find in every world that work exactly like shrines do in the latest Zelda games. Each of these challenges vary in difficulty and have you focus on certain items and abilities, and at the end of them is a Dark Drip, which again, aren’t essentially required to beat the game. The one thing I did enjoy about the challenges I finished was that they really make you think of different ways to use certain items and abilities, and that’s really a highlight in the game. Plenty of games have items that are just there for the sake of busy work, but those games also encourage you to seek them out.

Speaking of useless stuff, there’s also a badge system you can use to tune Hop’s abilities, but I didn’t find them incredibly useful except for the ones that increase how many items you can hold in your bag. That said, characters and plot moments in Big Hops don’t really inspire you to do much except just play at your own pace, and that was a turnoff to me.

Maybe it’s a mood thing, but 90% of the characters you’ll meet in Big Hops are jerks, and the weird thing is, Hop might be one too. Ben Diskin does an awesome job playing the condescending Diss, and Steve Blum also does an amazing job playing two more unlikable characters in Wett and Jackson. Most of the characters you interact with are unhelpful and never really inspired me to do anything, and I never really understood why. Maybe it’s my fault for expecting a fun and colorful whimsical, and happy-go-lucky game, but I digress.

There’s a lot of cute and cuddly here, but everybody in this game has a terrible attitude. With the dialogue choices you have in the game, you can make Hop quite a turd, too. Everybody loves talking about their problems, and as Hop, you can just be like, “Yeah but I need airshop parts.” Dude. I had pretty cool conversations with Luckshot’s lead, Chris Wade, but after playing through this game, I wonder if he was mad or something because the writing in this game just felt like you’re playing as a 17-year-old dealing with nagging parents the whole time.

Depending on your play style, Big Hops can take you anywhere between 10 and 15 hours to finish. If you’re an achievement hunter, there’s one you can earn if you beat the game in under four hours, which could be fun given how enjoyable the act of platforming traversal is. There’s a lot to like with this game in particular, but it felt like a slow burn, and that’s not exactly something you wanna say about a platformer. Honestly, if it weren’t for this review and me wanting to help Chris get more eyes on this title, I probably wouldn’t have rolled credits.

I’d also be remiss not to mention that I did run into some performance problems with my main playthrough, especially with the game’s last world when playing on PS5. I had a bunch of crashes when it came to exploding a few of the entryways that might’ve been out of the suggested order. This is something to look out for, and Luckshot assured me this is something they’re working on patching.

While I enjoyed my time with Big Hops, it wasn’t the must-play I was expecting it to be. But there are plenty of elements in the game that really give Luckshot’s next platforming or puzzle project a lot of potential, provided they really focus on the fun of either side.