The Next Penelope

Genre: Top-Down Racing

Players: 1-4 Competitive (Local)

.

Review:

The Next Penelope is a Top-Down Racing Game with some Action game elements, where players must navigate narrow courses at high speeds using a vehicle constantly moving forward, at times while using weapons to take out obstacles and enemies. The game’s title comes from the game’s story being a sci-fi re-imagining of the classic Greek tragedy told from the perspective of Odysseus’s wife Penelope, besieged by suitors and forced by Poseidon to seek out her long-missing husband using her husband’s old spaceship. Yeah, this game takes some liberties with the old Greek tale.

In terms of presentation, this game looks good, using decent 2D graphics with a mostly bright and appealing color palette, although the visuals can get a bit repetitive at times. This comes along with a decent soundtrack with some pretty good intense music to accentuate the action.

As for that action, there’s some good variety here in that this game isn’t just about racing, and reimagines its core gameplay numerous times throughout its experience. At its best, this game has a lot of clever ideas to shake up what you’re doing throughout it that can make it interesting to see what each new mission has to offer.

Unfortunately, I feel that this game’s difficulty level is really going to ensure it has a narrow appeal. The camera stays way too close to the action, which makes it harder to predict upcoming turns. Add to this sluggish and awkward controls and the fact that any failure that sees you losing all of your energy or falling off the track will force you to restart the entire (and at times lengthy) level, and this game is punishing on a level that most gamers will simply not have patience for.

I’m sorry to say, I just could not get into The Next Penelope. It’s not just that the game’s challenge level was unforgivably hard, but that this challenge was reinforced by sluggish controls and a terrible camera that seem designed to punish the player. If a Top-Down Racing Game with a high challenge level sounds appealing to you, you may want to give this game a try. Otherwise, stay clear.

tl;dr – The Next Penelope is a Top-Down Racing Game that has players doing a variety of things using a high-speed vehicle that’s always moving forward. There’s a good amount of variety here, but the difficulty level is absurdly high, and the game feels designed to artificially inflate that challenge level. Unless you’re looking for a punishing Top-Down Racer, this game is not for you.

Grade: C-

^{You can support eShopperReviews on Patreon! Please click HERE to become a Sponsor!}