Unbox: Newbie's Adventure

This modern take on the classic platformer genre can be summed up in a single word, which is "fine." Fine, as in, Unbox: Newbie's Adventure doesn't exactly rock the boat in terms of weaving in new ideas or exploring things that games haven't done before, but it doesn't set out to do that. No, Unbox seems intent on providing a standard, solid, couple-hour adventure giving players the opportunity to exercise their twitchy impulses in navigating and leaping over obstacles while also collecting various collectibles (stamps, golden masking tape) if they want. Kids are likely to be entertained, but are also just as likely to get bored by extended play sessions. While you are literally doing the same things over and over again in different locales, what drives this boredom more is just how generic the game is, all the way down to its repetitive music.

Still, if you dive in and stay submerged, you'll find challenging platforming action. The developers did a good job of creating worlds and levels to defy your ability to make jumps, do them quickly, and do it all with precision. There's some sloppiness in the inclusion of a "respawn" button, meaning if you get stuck and can't pry yourself out of unexpected corners, you can explode in a cloud of packing peanuts and re-emerge at an earlier checkpoint. You'll need to do that a lot, because your cube doesn't so much roll as flip itself side to side, meaning you'll get stuck in ways you wouldn't in other games. Combat, though infrequent, can be fairly imprecise for this same reason. Worst of all, glitches can rear their head unexpectedly and crash the game. As long as you're aware of these issues going in and are fine with them, you'll have a mostly enjoyable ride for a little while.