"Dear Clyde. Get me out of here!!! Signed, Clyde."
So Cloning Clyde is a 3D/2D side-scrolling action-platform game that spans about 45 different levels! Yes, I said 3D/2D. No, that's not a Star Wars droid. The game is totally side-scrolling (with up and down scrolling too, you know what I mean). But instead of sprites and 2D characters, everything is done in quasi-3D polygons that have a neat cel-shaded look to them. And BTW as many Xbox Live Arcade games are, Cloning Clyde is in 720p HD. Nice widescreen picture, and for a game that takes up about a meager 25 megs of your hard drive space, it's pretty good stuff. You have to respect what developers are able to do given the fact that Microsoft puts a 50 meg limit on Xbox Live Arcade game sizes (I guess for ease of downloading and space-saving reasons). Ok, so the premise of the game is this. Clyde has been kidnapped and experimented on by the evil corporation Dupliclone, thus the hospital gown that he's so elegantly forgot to tie-up in the back (is this game going to get an M rating??). They've found a way to clone him, and have done so many times. Now Clyde is trying to escape the lab, and rescue all the other Clydes along with him. Along the way, the other Clydes leave him messages that will help him make his escape. Along the way Clyde is going to face many obsticles such as mutant ninja chickens, security cameras, and a slew of puzzles that will tease poor Clyde's brain; which already isn't all there to begin with. But, Clyde knows a little "Clyde-Fu", so he can defend himself against the mutant chickens, and whatever other surprises come his way. While the game is a pretty standard platformer, how you beat each level is almost never straight forward. So you will have to do some special tricks in order to get through. Each level is basically a different environment. And they are all have witty names like "Eat Snow at Your Own Risk", and "Crouching Chicken"; so you have an idea what each level will be about. And each level has a mini-goals to complete as well as the main goal of simply getting through all the puzzles and such. In each level you have to rescue a certain number of your clones, and find a number of "Killer Kenns", you favorite figurines (Note from Clyde: THEY ARE ACTION FIGURES!!!!), strewn throughout the area. The mini-goals are optional, but they will contribute towards those all important Xbox 360 Achievements. Anyhow, while Clyde's main gameplay consists of running around, climbing ladders, and attacking chickens, he also has the ability to use the cloning machines in Dupliclone to make clones of himself to stand on buttons in the floor and to place them strategically around the level to get where they need to go. Not only that, but there are special DNA combining machines that actually take Clyde and something else, like a frog, chicken, or exploding barrel, and splice them together; kind of like The Fly. Make yourself into a walking powder keg so you can blow up a wall. Or combine yourself with a sheep to......err......Well anyway, I think my favorite is becoming a chicken-clyde, because he can fly around. Some levels in the game, like "Crouching Chicken" specifically make you become a chicken to beat it. So you get some nice variety. Some of the puzzles have taken me a while to get though. So even though I find the controls simplistic (which is the way I like my side-scrollers), you'll find some well-thought-out puzzles. There are pools of water with drains that you might need to plug. You might find some clones and have to figure out how to get them across a ravine. Sometimes you just need to jump around on some platforms and karate kick some chickens. The other thing I've noticed is that there are many times when you don't even have to follow a set way of completing a level. You can do things a number of different ways depending on the level.
Cloning Clyde also sports a whole multiplayer segment in which you can do co-op through each level, or get into a little multiplayer mayhem. Some of it is team based, where you and your team of Clydes has to go and knock out the opponent team's security bots. Some of it is straight up beating each other senseless (like Clyde had any to begin with) in various levels, some of which are unique to the multiplayer mode. You can even do offline split-screen multiplayer with your friends if you're having people over. Cloning Clyde is a nice break in the action from the standard ports that are coming to Xbox Live Arcade. Don't get me wrong, I like my arcade games. But sometimes you just need something different. And that's where this game comes in. It's fresh, it's a lot of fun, and it's simple. You can't ask for much more than that.