‘Clustertruck’ Review (PC)
Games let us do things that we’d never dream of in real life. One of the fun things is parkour. The ability to jump from building to building or find an impossible jump and succeed with the landing is something we can do in gaming worlds without any real danger. This is what makes Clustertruck so fun.
The concept behind Clustertruck is insane, but very simple. You start a level on the top of a truck which is speeding along a track along with a whole herd of other speeding trucks. These trucks will find certain obstacles in their way and as expected will react to them, which normally ends up in chaos and explosions. Your task is to get to the end of the level in one piece.
This rush to the end of the level is done through your parkour skills, namely jumping from truck to truck. In a perfect performance you’ll gracefully speed jump over the trucks and gracefully dive over the finish line. In reality though you’ll be making a mad dash to your doom, constantly dying until you get lucky and make it past the crashes and explosions, and other dangers. Basically it is a physics game, but a very fun one.
One thing that is obvious about Clustertruck is that it is a game born out of speed running and streaming of games. This is made obvious by the integration to Twitch. Viewers can add dangers such as explosions, reduced gravity, and bouncy trucks to the chaos to make your life even more interesting, but what it makes for is not only a fun playing experience but even more fun viewing.
The progression in the game is created by different levels featuring different environments and dangers. With later levels giant wheel like structures, huge rock structures close up on the road, and even come rolling down the hill to whack the trucks away. The fact that trucks can come from all directions is another problem.
To aid getting through the level abilities are provided that can slow down time, and give the ability to do such things as air dashes, speed jumps and use grappling hooks. This is one weakness in the game though, as they may be very useful to progress through the level but to actually gain the abilities is a slow process, especially for those who don’t manage to score many points through their many failures.
In terms of longevity with Clustertruck there is a map creator that is fairly easy to use, and this will probably work well with streaming of the game. Community created levels built with user interaction in mind will be fun and will cause the chaos that players and their viewers are looking for.
Clustertruck is an adrenaline rush fuelled dose of chaos that is easy to play, but hard to master. It will be interesting to see what speed runners do with the game, and how well it does with streamers. A game that manages to keep the fun, while seemingly relishing in the chaos it causes, Clustertruck is an experience that won’t be easily forgotten.
**** 4/5
Clustertruck is available on PC and PlayStation 4 now.
