Just saying, but I do have a curator page. If you like my remarks about games, you can find more of them here: https://store.steampowered.com/curator/44130985-TDP%27s-Gaming-Escapades

LocoCycle was the game that introduced me to Twisted Pixel Games. I played it ages ago, when I didn't actually care as much as nowadays about the quality of the product I consumed, and remember enjoying the ride. And this satisfaction from the game was what caused me to purchase The Maw and Ms. Splosion Man later on. Then I decided to come back to the game about 10 years later, while going through Twisted Pixel's PC catalogue with more gaming experience under my belt and... well... you can clearly see that I have decided to not recommended it now.
It pains me to say this, but LocoCycle is definitely the biggest and at the same time, the weakest game in Twisted Pixel's catalogue.

The very first thing that catches your eye with this game, is how high the production values are. There are over 40 minutes of live action cutscenes, featuring faces such as Tom Savini (From Dusk Till Dawn), James Gunn (Guardians of the Galaxy), Lloyd Kaufman (The Toxic Avenger) and Freddy Rodriguez (Planet Terror). The voice acting for the characters are done by Lisa Foiles (Leverage, The Desk of DEATH BATTLE), Christopher Sabat (My Hero Academia, Dragon Ball) and Robert Patrick (Terminator 2). The bikes you see in the game, IRIS and SPIKE, have been physically created to fit with the live-action cutscenes.
A LOT of money and effort has went into creating this game, probably multiple times more than Twisted Pixel's past games combined. This can make any fan of this developer think that they are going to experience a masterpiece; Because if there's so much effort put into making the movies, imagine how good the actual game can be! Right?

RIGHT?!

You play as a smart bike called IRIS, which is also an armed to the teeth weapon of mass destruction, and is created by none other than the science group responsible for the Splosion Man incidents. During a private showcase held by a military arms company called "Big Arms", IRIS gets hit by a lightning bolt which causes circuit damage, granting her sentience. After being taken to the garage so she can be repaired by a mechanic named Pablo, IRIS learns about the annual Freedom Rally in Scottsburg. She escapes from the facility to go there, completely unaware that Pablo's pant is stuck inside the chassis and he's literally getting dragged along, forcing Big Arms to go after them both.
The story plot we have here is actually insane, coupled with some extremely cheesy live-action cutscenes in-between levels. It's pretty clear the devs wanted the story to be as absurd as possible, which is not something out of ordinary for Twisted Pixel, and they have succeeded in that regard. The only problem is that the humor is not good; At least, not in the current time period.
Nearly all of the jokes and attempts at humor don't land, the references are very forced and the verbal exchanges between IRIS and Pablo are not very interesting, with some of them even getting repeated. In particular, the whole thing with no one understanding what Pablo says gets old pretty fast and the game never finds a way to make it entertaining until the very end.
Actually... I can say that last part about the whole game...

It 's a known fact that the game failed to be successful. Part of that failure was because Microsoft released LocoCycle as a launch title for Xbox One, a console which was dealing with disasters from the get-go, changing people's expectations about it. But a bigger part of the blame falls on the game itself, as it offers an incredibly repetitive and boring experience.
LocoCycle uses a mixture of beat'em up and vehicular combat genres alongside QTEs to form its gameplay, which seems very interesting as an idea, yet has not been executed well at all. The vehicular combat sections are very easy and even get trivial as you progress, because the game literally showers you with upgrade points. The beat'em up sections have you mashing the X button, and the enemies are so pathetic that you must be bad on purpose in order to get hit. The QTEs are used so often that have completely lost their novelty and uniqueness.
The game also never knows when to stop with something and every encounter in the game gets repeated over and over again. You will destroy the same pattern of enemy vehicles every level. You beat a wave of flying enemies and two more waves show up. You successfully QTE that guy who suddenly jumped you and 5 more show up, with another wave of them waiting for you at the end of the level. These repeats do nothing aside from artificially increasing the game's playtime, and making the player get bored out of their mind.
Even the boss fights are bad! You go against a giant, armed to the teeth attack chopper or a towering mechanical beast, expecting some grade-A action, just for the game to give you the most underwhelming boss fights of your entire gaming career. Nearly all of the bosses either have you doing a QTE to parry a specific attack and sending it back to them, or force you to do a boring on-rails shooter section. The only exceptions are the penultimate and final bosses of the game, where the game suddenly realizes "oh, this is supposed to be fun".

The other reason for why the gameplay feels so boring, is the audiovisual presentation. The music is well-composed, but doesn't fit the gameplay. You have a literal war machine fighting against an army equipped with advanced weapons, and the music is not energetic enough to support such a setting, even clashing pretty badly with the action on-screen due to it being too calm or quiet. There's no sense of impact, with your attacks lacking proper punchy sound effects and the visual effects failing to correctly depict the chaos caused by you, so the thrill of combat never gets relayed.
And the most headscratching moment arrives when you unlock and see concept arts of actually interesting events in the game's shop. There are stuff like driving on the walls of a tunnel to avoid traffic, train tracks exploding above IRIS, a battle against drones on a frozen lake, or IRIS and Pablo getting surrounded with lots of targeting reticles on them. And all of that begs one question: What happened here?
Did the devs decide that having more action is bad for the game? Did they have technical problems that prevented such scenarios to be created? Did Microsoft force them to rush the game for release because they desperately wanted to increase the number of Xbox One's launch titles? The world may never know...

As for what's next, there is nothing... at least not on PC and consoles. Twisted Pixel Games still exists and they seem to be successful, but they've been developing games exclusively for the Occulus devices since after LocoCycle, and are a subsidiary of Meta now.
Well... it was fun while it lasted. Guess we have to emulate Comic Jumper and Splosion Man after all...


Interesting idea, bad execution. There's a lot of effort put into making the cutscenes, but the rest of the game feels the opposite, being very boring and repetitive with jokes that mostly don't land.

[quote]Just saying, but I do have a curator page. If you like my remarks about games, you can find more of them here: https://store.steampowered.com/curator/44130985-TDP%27s-Gaming-Escapades [/quote] LocoCycle was the game that introduced me to Twisted Pixel Games. I played it ages ago, when I didn't actually care as much as nowadays about the quality of the product I consumed, and remember enjoying the ride. And this satisfaction from the game was what caused me to purchase The Maw and Ms. Splosion Man later on. Then I decided to come back to the game about 10 years later, while going through Twisted Pixel's PC catalogue with more gaming experience under my belt and... well... you can clearly see that I have decided to not recommended it now. It pains me to say this, but LocoCycle is definitely the biggest and at the same time, the weakest game in Twisted Pixel's catalogue. [h2]The bigger, the better?[/h2] The very first thing that catches your eye with this game, is how high the production values are. There are over 40 minutes of live action cutscenes, featuring faces such as Tom Savini (From Dusk Till Dawn), James Gunn (Guardians of the Galaxy), Lloyd Kaufman (The Toxic Avenger) and Freddy Rodriguez (Planet Terror). The voice acting for the characters are done by Lisa Foiles (Leverage, The Desk of DEATH BATTLE), Christopher Sabat (My Hero Academia, Dragon Ball) and Robert Patrick (Terminator 2). The bikes you see in the game, IRIS and SPIKE, have been physically created to fit with the live-action cutscenes. [b]A LOT[/b] of money and effort has went into creating this game, probably multiple times more than Twisted Pixel's past games combined. This can make any fan of this developer think that they are going to experience a masterpiece; Because if there's so much effort put into making the movies, imagine how good the actual game can be! Right? [i][b]RIGHT?![/b][/i] [h2]Where can I buy the exact durable shirt and pants that Pablo is wearing?[/h2] You play as a smart bike called IRIS, which is also an armed to the teeth weapon of mass destruction, and is created by none other than the science group responsible for the Splosion Man incidents. During a private showcase held by a military arms company called "Big Arms", IRIS gets hit by a lightning bolt which causes circuit damage, granting her sentience. After being taken to the garage so she can be repaired by a mechanic named Pablo, IRIS learns about the annual Freedom Rally in Scottsburg. She escapes from the facility to go there, completely unaware that Pablo's pant is stuck inside the chassis and he's literally getting dragged along, forcing Big Arms to go after them both. The story plot we have here is actually insane, coupled with some [i]extremely[/i] cheesy live-action cutscenes in-between levels. It's pretty clear the devs wanted the story to be as absurd as possible, which is not something out of ordinary for Twisted Pixel, and they have succeeded in that regard. The only problem is that the humor is not good; At least, not in the current time period. Nearly all of the jokes and attempts at humor don't land, the references are very forced and the verbal exchanges between IRIS and Pablo are not very interesting, with some of them even getting repeated. In particular, the whole thing with no one understanding what Pablo says gets old pretty fast and the game never finds a way to make it entertaining until the very end. Actually... I can say that last part about the whole game... [h2]I think it's clear why this game failed to get players' attention[/h2] It 's a known fact that the game failed to be successful. Part of that failure was because Microsoft released LocoCycle as a launch title for Xbox One, a console which was dealing with disasters from the get-go, changing people's expectations about it. But a bigger part of the blame falls on the game itself, as it offers an incredibly repetitive and boring experience. LocoCycle uses a mixture of beat'em up and vehicular combat genres alongside QTEs to form its gameplay, which seems very interesting as an idea, yet has not been executed well at all. The vehicular combat sections are very easy and even get trivial as you progress, because the game literally showers you with upgrade points. The beat'em up sections have you mashing the X button, and the enemies are so pathetic that you must be bad on purpose in order to get hit. The QTEs are used so often that have completely lost their novelty and uniqueness. The game also never knows when to stop with something and every encounter in the game gets repeated over and over again. You will destroy the same pattern of enemy vehicles every level. You beat a wave of flying enemies and two more waves show up. You successfully QTE that guy who suddenly jumped you and 5 more show up, with another wave of them waiting for you at the end of the level. These repeats do nothing aside from artificially increasing the game's playtime, and making the player get bored out of their mind. Even the boss fights are bad! You go against a giant, armed to the teeth attack chopper or a towering mechanical beast, expecting some grade-A action, just for the game to give you the most underwhelming boss fights of your entire gaming career. Nearly all of the bosses either have you doing a QTE to parry a specific attack and sending it back to them, or force you to do a boring on-rails shooter section. The only exceptions are the penultimate and final bosses of the game, where the game suddenly realizes "oh, this is supposed to be fun". [h2]Devs, blink twice if Microsoft forced you to rush this...[/h2] The other reason for why the gameplay feels so boring, is the audiovisual presentation. The music is well-composed, but doesn't fit the gameplay. You have a literal war machine fighting against an army equipped with advanced weapons, and the music is not energetic enough to support such a setting, even clashing pretty badly with the action on-screen due to it being too calm or quiet. There's no sense of impact, with your attacks lacking proper punchy sound effects and the visual effects failing to correctly depict the chaos caused by you, so the thrill of combat never gets relayed. And the most headscratching moment arrives when you unlock and see concept arts of actually interesting events in the game's shop. There are stuff like driving on the walls of a tunnel to avoid traffic, train tracks exploding above IRIS, a battle against drones on a frozen lake, or IRIS and Pablo getting surrounded with lots of targeting reticles on them. And all of that begs one question: What happened here? Did the devs decide that having more action is bad for the game? Did they have technical problems that prevented such scenarios to be created? Did Microsoft force them to rush the game for release because they desperately wanted to increase the number of Xbox One's launch titles? The world may never know... [h2]Thanks, Zuckerberg...[/h2] As for what's next, there is nothing... at least not on PC and consoles. Twisted Pixel Games still exists and they seem to be successful, but they've been developing games exclusively for the Occulus devices since after LocoCycle, and are a subsidiary of Meta now. Well... it was fun while it lasted. Guess we have to emulate Comic Jumper and Splosion Man after all... [h2]TL;DR[/h2] Interesting idea, bad execution. There's a lot of effort put into making the cutscenes, but the rest of the game feels the opposite, being very boring and repetitive with jokes that mostly don't land.