Jumpjet Rex was part of the Humble Monthly for May 2016. I remember seeing it on steam, and even had it wishlisted at one point but was not in the mood for platformers enough to make the actual purchase.

So when it appeared in the bundle pack I smiled, as it was one I was waiting on.

And once again, I was deceived by a cute dinosaur.

Taking inspiration from 8/16 bit platformers the game advertises itself in some places as a 'cute' game where you are a T-Rex on rocket boots, and in other places as a crushingly difficult platformer genre for hardcore users who like to be punished every second of their lives.

And this is one of my major gripes with this title. It looks and feels totally different from what you may expect from it. It is hard, but manageably so, yet manages to make me rage quit more than I thought I would. A game best handled in small doses but one where you need to practice levels a lot unless you are already a savant at this genre. Something that looks like it would appeal to a wide audience, but would really frustrate most of them causing an early uninstall.

Those who stick with it will get a lot of enjoyment out of it, as I can really see the appeal here. The platformer aspect while imperfect can be picked up quickly and the controls are basic enough to master. Which is why I find it really sad that it did not work for me.

Rex himself bobs up and down on his boots and does not walk. Instead you hover left and right to move along while up in the air. Jumping causing a small jump about your character height, or you can activate the boots for an exponential boost into the air.

Once up you can activate a dash command and move roughly a screen length forward, or activate a tail whip to attack the few enemies you encounter in the level and various boss monsters.

But the controls feel a combination of stiff and floaty. It always felt hard to get moving and not responsive enough once you were going somewhere. If you are used to other games where the feedback is immediate and your player avatar can swap between actions in a small fraction of a second you are going to be annoyed with this one.

Many times while playing I just ended up hitting 'R' to restart the level until I got it down to pixel perfect precision. And while possible after a few tries due to the levels being short enough, it caused me to rapidly tire of such shenanigans.

The "Tail Whip" attack is also pretty much hopelessly pointless outside of the bosses. Most enemies I could dash through or simply avoid. And attacking them just caused me to fall behind on the level time goal.

The main point of the game is to save the planet from a giant meteor. To do so you have to collect enough stars in a selection of stages to open a boss gate and move into the next area of levels until you reach Earth.

Each level can provide up to three stars

• One for Finishing it
• One for Finishing it without dying
• One for Finishing it within a time attack goal

The first two are easy to grab, especially on easy mode where you have 2HP and can afford to be hit once. The third was always the most challenging. Complaints about the control scheme aside it is possible to do them, even if you are not too savvy at it. Just expect to restart a lot.

Thankfully you don't have to achieve all three at once, and can go back at any point to unlock the other stars. A lot of the time I took a slow path to learn the level layouts location of enemies, spikes, gate rings, and coins. Then would try and find the most efficient path from start, through all the rings, and exit.

While this did take some time it did allow be to 3-star every late level I played after 5-10 minutes each. What did help was that there is a 'ghost' opponent you play against after the first successful win. Anyone growing up with arcade games will recall how to respond to them to increase your chance of doing better.

You can also replay over and over to unlock coins and find hidden treasure boxes.

Coins provide unlockable cosmetic items in the shop levels to customise your look, but have no other apparent bonuses. I would of liked to see some ability unlocks to aid in going back to older levels and make getting some stars easier as well as providing other possibilities in later stages. But there's just appearance items for your head, skin colour, and boots. So I went with the stock options and had a dark purple T-Rex with a bandanna.

Treasure boxes also don't appear to do anything other than add items into your home base. Which itself does little from the ego boosting of collected stuff and allowing you to change between collected cosmetics and listen to the soundtrack.

The graphics are distinctive. Rex is cute. The music is nice and chippy. But there's a lot to get over on how the game responds to the player before you can move forward.

There's some kind of co-op and race options too, but as a single player gamer and not having anyone to join in I can't comment on how well they work compared to the campaign.

If you liked the 8/16 bit era of games that punched you in the chin until you did well I'd suggest picking it up. But I can't see most people tolerating the type of bullshit this actually is.

Plus. It's a T-Rex. Not the mighty Baryonyx, so there's that too...

Game Acquisition: Humble Monthly (May 2016)
Platform Used: Steam
Tweet Thread: 1 - 20 July 2016
PC Used: Scorptec Venom 2009 MK2

OS: Windows XP+
Processor: SSE2 instruction set support.
Memory: 512 MB RAM
Graphics: DX9 (shader model 2.0) capabilities; generally everything made since 2004 should work.
Storage: 200 MB available space