Joe Danger

Evel Knievel. When I was growing up in the seventies, it seemed like he was jumping over buses, canyons, Pepsi vans, cars, every other day of the week. He was a phenomenon - this was a man who filled Wembley Stadium just to watch his, maybe 10-second, jump over 13 buses. He seemed to always crash - he hit one of the buses in the Wembley stunt, breaking his pelvis in the process*. The commentary on that event said that he had broken every bone in his body. Probably hyperbole but, to a 4-year old boy, this was unbelievably cool and the toy manufacturers of the world exploited this with the Evel Knievel stunt cycle - wind a handle on a mount attached to a bike with a doll of Evel attached and then let rip in death-defying recreations. Merry Christmas to me, 1975-style. Trust me, it was a great toy.

Hello Games have tapped into this with their game 'Joe Danger', where the eponymous hero (by the looks of his paunch, having seen better days), traverses (in a sort of 2.5D) a course of jumps, bars (to duck under), diverging paths, shark-filled swimming pools (of course), all the time building a score by chaining the tricks together. Joe travels from right to left through the course, eventually reaching a finish line.


If you've played Trials HD, this probably sounds a bit familiar. However, it is a lot more forgiving. I like Trials HD but it is (for me, anyway) pretty hard. The 'Hard' levels and above are painfully tough. Joe Danger isn't as tough initially. Getting from A to B, in the levels that I played, was certainly achievable. Getting from A to B, collecting all that needs to be collected, chaining tricks while you do so and building your score, on the other hand, is much less so. What it taps into, as Trials HD also does, is the 'one more go' mechanic - I could have stayed at the Hello Games stand at the Expo a lot longer than I did in scratching that particular itch.


Graphically, I think it is best described as looking like a classic era Warner Brothers cartoon. You can imagine Wile E Coyote poking out from behind one of the clapboard 'movie-set' frontage-only houses that line the track. It is certainly a look that works in concert with the style of the game and the gameplay itself - this is not an ultra realistic game (though the mention of shark-filled pools above probably gave that away).


I thoroughly enjoyed this game. Short of buying a stunt cycle from eBay and making a ramp from 10 Ladybird books and a Blue Peter Annual, this is the definitely the way to best relive Evel Knievel memories. At heart this is a great little game, even if you've no memories of the toy (which is good for Hello, as I doubt that aiming at nostalgic 30-something gamers is a successful business model!).


The game comes out in Spring 2010. No platform has yet been announced - one of the developers told me that they hope to do so soon. To me, it looks like a PSN or Xbox Live Arcade game; either format would suit what was, for me, one of the games of the Expo (alongside Heavy Rain).


*Even so, he still walked off the pitch, saying 'I walked in, I want to walk out again' - THAT'S how cool he was