Miko Mole Review
What is your dream in life? Money? Fame? Being a flying mole stealing diamonds from an evil corporation? If your answer was the third option – which I’m sure it was – then you will be glad to know Miko Mole features it in spades.
You are Miko, a mole who for some unknown reason has a helicopter attached to him and has decided to take revenge on the most evil corporation in the world; Evil Corp. Yes, that is really their name and no, this is not a Mr. Robot spin-off. Taking place in a 2.5D physics based puzzle platformer you will fly around many levels collecting diamonds and avoiding death from falling rocks, lasers and bats.
Unfortunately, my first impression was not a good one: a cutscene which plays every time you boot up the game, fidgety menus, horribly unlevel audio and downright ugly visuals. Thankfully, the cutscene can be skipped but the visuals and audio cannot. With no audio sliders of any kind (just on or off) you will have to decide whether to be deafened by irritating sound effects and hear the soundtrack or to have level – but still irritating – sound effects and barely hear the soundtrack. Fortunately this isn’t too much of a loss as the game only features three generic (but catchy!) songs which loop incessantly.
Initially the gameplay isn’t much of an improvement either. Due to Miko being a mole, many of the levels – particularly early on – rely on you digging through dirt, but Miko’s hitbox is so large it is impossible to dig precisely. This can often cause rocks sitting on top of the dirt to fall and kill you forcing you to restart the level. The hitbox continues to be a nuisance throughout the game leaving you stuck on pieces of the enviroment or being killed by enemies who have yet to actually touch you. It almost feels like Miko Mole wants you to die through no fault of your own as its controls continue to bewilder. Miko, confusingly, has a short delay before movement which, while not a large problem, can cause annoyance when trying to avoid death from randomly-moving enemies.
As the game progresses however (and once you’ve adjusted to the poor movement) Miko Mole begins to show relatively solid base mechanics. Throughout its decently lengthy campaign of 240 levels, new mechanics will continue to be introduced: beginning with just falling rocks and bats, the game will continue to evolve with numerous puzzle and stealth mechanics such as lasers, mirrors, cameras as well as dark and underwater levels which always keep the game feeling fresh and challenging. Although as with most games in this genre, later levels become more of a puzzle of “do it perfectly this way to complete it” rather than doing it your own way. You are allowed however to skip between any of its levels at will if anything becomes too difficult.
Unfortunately, Miko Mole offers little incentive to keep playing, past getting full stars and achieving an “Epic Win” on each level. Some larger levels can also inconceivably lag, which, for how poor the graphics are here, is just plain unexcusable. When compared to some of the greats in its genre like Braid or Unmechanical, Miko Mole pales in comparison, offering little new or exciting. This is, perhaps, due to its release on consoles; up until this point EnsenaSoft, the developers, have only created mobile games and with their first foray into making games for consoles seem to have forgot any added depth needed. A release on mobile or even the forgotten PS Vita may have suited Miko Mole better – and would help explain the terrible graphics.
Miko Mole offers a poor first impression with bad presentation, graphics and annoying menus. The most important feature of a game however is its gameplay – its mechanics – which, if you can get past the hitbox and movement, Miko Mole offers a pretty solid package with enough content and freshness that may just keep some around for a little under 10 hours.
