Planet of the Apes: Last Frontier
The biggest problem for Planet of the Apes: Last Frontier is that it’s difficult not to compare it with Hidden Agenda, and that’s not a kind comparison. Last Frontier is also a cinematic narrative game, but it’s a more straightforward one: the story plays out, you make dialogue choices that influence its direction, and if you’re playing in a group those decisions are made by majority vote.
That structure works fine, but to come to this game after experiencing how creatively Hidden Agenda incorporates multiplayer, it’s hard not to feel one something’s missing.
Last Frontier doesn’t tell the most original or tale, but the high production values and focus on funnelling you from one intense, dramatic moment to another man is never boring. As you’d expect from the title, it’s a tie-in to the Planet of the Apes film franchise, though it’s a self-contained story—despite having never watched any of the movies, I had no trouble following what was going on.
The game alternates between the perspectives of a group of apes and a group of humans. The apes are aware of the human presence and chose to live in hiding, until for scarcity forces them out into the open. The humans, in the other hand, don’t know about the apes until they inevitably run into them.
Playing as key figures within each group, your decisions determine how peacefully (or not) the interspecies interactions play out. When things get heated,you can try be a mediator, or simply let the fighting break out and guide one side of the other to victory.
Like I said, there’s nothing groundbreaking here, but Planet of the Apes: Last Frontier offers a captivating enough couple of hours. That said, Hidden Agenda offers the same within a far more interesting multiplayer framework, so unless you’re a diehard Planet of the Apes fan, there’s little reason to pick this game over that one.
Knowledge is Power
Knowledge is Power is the weakest game in the PlayLink lineup, mainly because it doesn’t do anything that hasn’t already been done–and done better–by other games. It’s a standard quiz game, with little to give it any sort of identity other than weak attempts at irreverent humour.
In each round, players vote for one of four categories before trying to answer the resulting trivia question; the quicker you answer, the more points you earn. After that, you get another set of category options that relate in some way to the previous answer–so if the answer was “sushi”, the next set of category options might be food, travel, Asian history, and, and specialty ingredients, or some such.
Before most questions, you get a chance to throw a mild inconvenience at another player: slime covers their answers until they wipe it away; frozen answers have to be freed of ice before they can be chosen; some letters disappear—that sort of thing. Unfortunately, the impact of these is almost negligible. They’re a minor inconvenience at worst, making the whole system feel like an unnecessary extra step in answering the questions, rather than a way of injecting an extra layer into the game.
Aside from that, the rest of Knowledge is Power‘s mechanics follow standard trivia conventions, with things like lightning rounds and matching related words. If you’ve ever played any other quiz game or watched a trivia show on TV, nothing here will stand out.
Knowledge is Power tries to find some sense of personality in its humour, but when the extent of said humour is in “quirky” characters like an old man in a hot dog costume, it all falls flat. The host tries to crack jokes from time to time, but they rarely land, and there’s no humour whatsoever in the quiz game itself.
Compare that with something like You Don’t Know Jack, another trivia game that defines itself by its oddball humour. That’s a game that works because its every facet ties into that premise: questions are deliberately bizarre, and some of the mini-games feel like a fever dream. By contrast, Knowledge is Power just feels like a by-the-numbers quiz game with a weak attempt at humour slapped over the top at the last minute.
***
PlayLink has a great initiative, creating a much more accessible style of party game through the use of smartphones. What’s been released so far is a mixed bag—SingStar Celebration is as great as any other SingStar game, and Hidden Agenda carves a fascinating new path in cooperative game design, but Planet of the Apes: Last Frontier and Knowledge is Power have much less to offer. The good news is that all these games are sold individually, so you can pick up the best ones and leave the rest behind.
It’ll be interesting to see how PlayLink develops from here. Frantics looks like it could be a lot of fun, and I sincerely hope we see more from Supermassive Games in this space. I’m looking forward to PlayLink’s future; in the meantime, you’ll probably find me singing Call Me Maybe ad infinitum. Thanks, SingStar.