Spot Goes to Hollywood Review

After a two year banishment to development limbo, Spot Goes to Hollywood has finally come to town on the Playstation. But despite programmers' efforts to spice it up, Spot 3 still resembles the 16-bit versions released months earlier. Only the amazing full-motion video sequences make you realize Spot 3 is playing on a 32-bit system. The upside is that the time obviously not spent on the rather droll graphics was focused instead on gameplay. The result is a batch of very large, diverse, and challenging levels. This is old-school platform gaming at its finest.

SGTH (otherwise known as Spot 3, being the third game based on 7-Up's tiny mascot) is an isometric view run-and-jump game, in which the tiny red circle of a hero collects even tinier red circles, while jumping over obstacles and shooting enemies with (strangely) deadly carbonation bubbles. With virtually no background animation or parallax scrolling, and spotty (pun intended) animation, Spot Goes to Hollywood looks like a touched-up Super NES game. Spot 3 also has the same weaknesses every isometric game in history seems to have. First, it's often very difficult to tell where certain items and objects are in relation to the player - spots that look to be near the ground are sometimes high in the air and out of reach. Second, it's often difficult to accurately control the game, since the player must move unnaturally in diagonals. The designers recognized this problem, however, and to minimize this flaw the game allows players to choose between isometric or regular movement.

But the highlight of Spot Goes to Hollywood isn't the gameplay - it's the fantastic musical score by Tommy Tallarico. In terms of mood-setting and quality, it outdoes many Hollywood movie scores. It's so much better than the sub-par graphics, in fact, that it clashes with the primitive visual style - it's like watching Charlie Chaplin's Gold Rush with THX surround sound.

Spot Goes to Hollywood won't appeal to anyone but hard-core gaming junkies who value gameplay over graphics. Ultimately, it's not worth a purchase, though it's probably worth a rental.