People often forget that some of the greatest games released have had little to no story with a simple premise. Pacman, Rootbeer Tapper and even early versions of Super Mario Bros. all had a very basic concept, yet provided countless hours of entertainment. The recently released Grab the Bottle offers a similar experience, with the player guiding a hand through a 2D landscape, interacting with or avoiding obstacles along the way, with the single goal of picking up all of the collectibles along the way to a single bottle in the level.

The gameplay is extremely basic, yet gets more and more complex as you go. At first, you’ll simply need to make it from point A to point B, B standing for bottle. As you progress, you will soon have to pick up additional items along the way, and finally, start using objects that can be grabbed or moved to remove barriers within the game world. These range from simple items such as a glass or toy that can be used to break weak barriers and eventually expand to be bombs that can be used to remove huge chunks of the game world, often requiring the player to use their own outstretched arm to provide a bridge for the item to rest prior to exploding.

While the premise is extremely simplistic, the execution requires proper planning and pin point accuracy, as the slightest mistake will result in failure and your hand being pushed back a short distance. After three errors, you will have to start the level over. If you back yourself into a corner, you can simply press one of the face buttons to restart the mission, similar to the Trials or Hotline Miami franchises. Restarting the level is fluid, with little to no load times; however, frustration hit early in the game due to the difficulty spiking quickly. Within the first hour I was racking up failures left and right, with one level reaching a staggering 32 deaths prior to completing it. While it’s easy to figure out how you would be able to solve the many puzzles the game throws at you, mastering the controls is the true challenge.

When you get down to it, there are two types of games for the Xbox One console: games that can be played with drifting analog sticks and ones that cannot be. This is the latter, resulting in me needing to break out my wife’s newer, less used controller, as the slightest bit of drift will cause this game to be your worst nightmare. It is very accessible at first, but the fact that you can only move the hand left or right, regardless of the direction or angle you are viewing the game at, is extremely difficult to grasp early on. I initially thought that my controller or the game itself was completely broken before realizing that this is the way the game was designed. While I would have preferred the ability to simply press the stick or D-pad in the direction I wish to go, this adds some much needed depth to the title.

The comic book inspired art style gives the player something pleasant to look at with the environments being rendered in a style that mimics the old school comic book printing that used tiny dots of ink to color the frames. It even uses enough visible sound effect bubbles to make the late Adam West jump for joy. While far from awe-inspiring, it is refreshing to see the developers use this method when they could have just as easily used a solid fill for the objects. The comic book style extends to the paneled cut scenes that occur from time to time, giving us backstory on the protagonist and his Stretch Armstrong-ish ability to extend his arm to ridiculous proportions. While it’s not really needed to enjoy (or be frustrated) with the title, it’s nice to see the attempt was made.

Grab the Bottle doesn’t offer much in replay value outside of replaying the levels in an attempt for perfect completions, but the campaign mode offers plenty of content for the budget price point. If you can get past the awkward control scheme, you will find a rewarding puzzle game that makes the player feel as if each small victory is worthy of celebration.

7 out of 10

Pros

• Interesting Premise
• Comic Book Inspired Design Works Well

Cons

• Controls Are Extremely Touchy
• Difficulty Spikes Early

Grab the Bottle was developed by Sometimes You and published by Kamina Dimension. It was released on PC in 2017, as well as NS, PS4, and X1 on June 20th, 2018 for $4.99. The game was provided to us for review on PS4 and X1. For more on Grab the Bottle, visit the developer’s official site.

 

Here at GBG we use a rating method that you are more than likely familiar with – a scale of 1 to 10. For clarification, we intend on using the entire scale: 1-4 is something you should probably avoid paying for; 5-7 is something that is worth playing, but probably not at full price; 8-10 is a great title that you can feel confident about buying. If you have any questions or comments about how we rate a game, please let us know.

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