Drill Dozer Review

But of course not all platform games are like this. Some of them wear you down by sitting and asking the same question over and over, while others go completely the other way and just keep changing subject so much that you quickly forget who you are, what you're doing and which buttons to push while you're being tripped up. Others just storm up to you like Jack Bauer, shoot you in the kneecap and bellow things like WHERE ARE THE CHAOS EMERALDS.

Drill Dozer, cobbled together by Pokemon developer Game Freak, is very much the clever detective, starting with a simple theme and gradually expanding upon it without ever abandoning the core idea. Thrust into a drill dozer suit, you're hot on the trail of some chaps who pinched your red diamond, and you're going to recover it by working your way through 2D side-scrolling platform levels that rely on your spinning drill-bit to break through walls and blocks, skip across pits, reach higher areas and unravel a clever group of enemies. It's all about drilling. You jump, you can drill clockwise or anti-clockwise by tugging L or R, and you can upgrade your bit twice per level to increase the drill action's speed and longevity. And while the questions the game asks grow ever more elaborate, they always focus on the key facts - and you're the one in the magnificent outfit.

Blocks with outlines regrow once you've drilled them, allowing you to retrace your steps.

Early on, you discover that when a breakable block is perched on the edge of a ledge you want to reach, you can leap toward it, drill through it and be deposited on the ledge in a single motion - rather than drilling, dropping down once it's broken through, as logic might dictate, and clambering back up again. This strikes you as a smart bit of design anyway, but then you realise that if a trio of blocks are suspended next to each other in the air, and your drill-bit is sufficiently upgraded (the third upgrade, or gear, allows you to drill indefinitely), you can drill them all in one chain and reach out of the way health pick-ups or collectible computer chips.

Soon you're faced with air-conditioning vents threaded as if for a screw - and you can haul yourself through these by drilling the correct way. A nice application of your skills, which soon demands concentration by chasing you with electric sparks, or having peculiar vent-poking crabs hack away at it, or having you move backward and forward in the vent to stay out of the way of the sparks and perilous dead-ends.

Instead of simply having moving platforms (though it does), Drill Dozer has moving sockets, which you lock into with your drill-bit - and remain attached to for as long as your drill spins. The simpler ones you attach to from the bottom; the harder ones are horizontal, and often involve switching sides with the left and right pad directions to avoid bumping into hard ledges and blocks. There's even a manner of wall-jumping. When locked into a socket, or with your drill bound to a wobbly jelly block, spinning up and then hitting the opposite spin direction propels you upward and backward; in some areas, you're asked to climb from jelly block to jelly block or socket to socket using this technique, and each upgrade allows you to leap a bit further.

Hop backward from a jelly block to reach platforms. It's like a new platform language. Poirot to Mario's Morse. [That's enough TV for you. -Ed]

Rarely is anything unintuitive. You might find the handholding you receive from your drilling pals to go a bit far to begin with, but they soon shut up and leave you to get on with things. And things are vibrantly coloured, traditionally 16-bit in style and animation, and accompanied by a marvellously bouncy soundtrack - not to mention the optional rumbling of the cartridge, the ferocity of which helps to demonstrate which drill-gear you're in. Well, I say ferocity; it's hardly Jack Bauer.

Each of the game's dozen or so stages is a handsome, varied and frequently surprising affair, mixing puzzles with platform tests and sprinkling the whole thing with combat. Enemies generally have to be drilled for a certain period of time - as they grow more battle-hardened, you'll have to try and get behind them to do this, or avoid invincible states and the like. Bosses, meanwhile, are a genuine pleasure - demanding nimble thumbs to dodge their projectiles and a bit of cunning to find their weak spots, all of which are literally undone, as you've guessed, by a good bit of drilling.

When you drill, this overlay shows your spin speed, and you shift up to the next gear by pressing the L or R button again when prompted.

There's a lovely fluidity to the whole thing, too. As you smilingly out-manoeuvre your two-dimensional accuser, you're flung toward disparate objectives down seemingly maze-like branches, but always lead inexorably back to the point of convergence - back-tracking is seldom a problem, nor is the age-old platform peril of "saving that route for later" and then having access to it cut off forever 32 pixels down the road. What's more, anything you do miss can be returned to afterward - levels are scattered with blocks that you can't break through immediately, and so you spend the computer chips you've amassed at the shop to buy drill-bits that can do it, and subsequently return to track down their hidden treasure. It's not quite as satisfying as all that, but there are a handful of hidden expert levels to unlock this way, which is nice since the single-player game is relatively short - you won't complete it in the space of a lengthy commute, but you probably will within a week of them.