Freddy Farmer
Price: £4.99 eShop/PSN (copy provided for review)
Developer: Catcade
Publisher: Flynn's Arcade
Players: 1
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A shopping list of five items! Yeah, I struggle to remember those when I nip out to the corner shop. Collect them in the right order? Now, you're asking for trouble.
Take one farmer (Freddy), his daughter kidnapped by a dragon and a set of fruit-based items you need to collect for the wizard's spells to rescue her from the top of a stinky old castle.
Simple really, and this retro game has plenty of old-school charm. Get the items in the right order for the best score, do it faster for the best bonus, and repeat many times across the different realms, forest, mines, mountain, cemetery and castle. Each with multiple levels and increasingly nasty guards.
And that's it really. You soon learn the tricks of each enemy from farting mushrooms to racing blobs, weapon-toting goblins and so on. And be on the look out for the extra life bat! Or the gaps in the screen to cross sides and avoid the beasties.
The trouble with such a simple game is the mechanics need to be spot on, as with Donut Dodo.
Unfortunately, Freddy Farmer is Clarkson'ed by a few issues. First, he'll sit down on the job if you leave him for a few seconds, with a painful delay in getting back up. Also, you can't cancel ladder climbs, which can be a pain if you mis-trigger or mis-time one. And every jump needs to be made with conviction, otherwise you can tag the wrong fruit, fall onto the wrong one, or die a feeble death.
Put your maximum effort focus on, and you can overcome these with a fabulously speedy and accurate performance, until you eventually cock it up. Okay, you can take liberties with continues, but for those who want to master Freddy Farmer a touch of patience and total control are key.
Gotta love the crisp pixels, the bloopy effects and tunes, and the new features that appear in the later levels like rope swings, but the mechanics need a little tightening to make this perfect.
Score 3/5
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