Saturday 12 March 2016

Action Henk (Xbox One) - Review

Action Henk is available now on Xbox One and is priced at £11.99.

Action Henk is a side-scrolling speed-runner which sees you take on the role of Action Henk (and his opponents when you unlock them by beating them) in a wacky race to get to the end of the course as fast as possible. Do this by running, jumping and of course butt-sliding. Because what good is a speed-runner if you can't go faster by sitting on your arse?!

The graphics are loud and colourful. The story and cut-scenes could quite gladly disappear without losing anything from the game at all in my opinion. In fact the cut scenes take you out of the fast and frenetic gameplay that suits Action Henk so well, which can get kinda frustrating. Or maybe I'm just a really inpatient person. Yeah, actually it's probably the latter.

So as well as a single player mode, which sees you unlock new skills and new avatars to play as you get a multiplayer, including LOCAL multiplayer - a mode many games seem to be forgetting about. We're a gaming family in this house, so any game that allows us to sit in the same room and play together is given a lot of attention. When Ark was updated with Local Splitscreen, my son and I spent almost an entire day building a village together. It was AWESOME.

Action Henk is a good little pick-up-and-play game that does get really difficult to master, but it feels like it could have been more. A track creator mode would have been great, and would have made the most of the settings and props available. It's a simple game done well, that relies on you wanting, nay needing, to beat your friends to the top of the leaderboards. I have to admit to falling prey to this myself for a little while, replaying the same level over and over in a vain attempt at beating someone to only end up giving up in a rage half an hour later having gotten within .3 of a second of them. I used to play a fair bit of Trials on the Xbox 360 and would gladly spend an entire day fighting my way back to the top of a leaderboard my friend had managed to leapfrog me on. We had quite the battle going, spanning months and neither of us got sick of doing it but I find I have much less time these days for this type of thing, meaning I care much less about being at the top of the leaderboard and more about just being able to get through the levels. This is a very personal thing though and in no way means that the game isn't enjoyable, all I'm trying to say is that you yourself know whether you fall slave to a leaderboard. If you do (and you enjoy it ) then this game is definitely for you. If not, maybe you should look at something else.

6/10 TRY IT!
A code was provided for the purpose of this review. 

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