Low G Man: The Low Gravity Man

"One man CAN stop a robot uprising!"

The ads promised huge boss robots, vehicles you could steal and control, and a hero with the power to make leaps two entire screens high. It sounds awesome. But it wasn't.

I'm not saying Low G Man is a terrible game, mind you. As a general platform action game, it's really cool. But as far as living up to its hype goes, Low G Man falls on his face from those two screens up.

The story is about some colony planet where robots do the dirty work while people sit around sipping champagne and appreciating the large cities and beautiful sunsets. But soon the robots decide to indulge in their favorite passtime and revolt. Some governing body decides something must be done and dispatches Low G Man, the Low Gravity Man, to make things better. The manual makes it sound like there are a lot of these guys, so why the heck one is being sent to liberate an entire planet is beyond the grasp of my feeble intellect.

Anyhoo, Low G Man has a gun that freezes robots for a few seconds and shoots left and right, and an armor-piercing spear that only works up or down to finish them off with. This being a futuristic action game, he can acquire all manner of unlikely ammunition and, as stated above, commandeer a fleet of awesome vehicles after stealing them from their robot pilots. Like the aptly-named Walker, the Hover, and the Spider, which kills robots with a touch.

And, as also stated above, with the right power-ups, your Low G Man can suspend gravity and send himself flying high, two screen lengths high, to be exact. This, unfortunately, is the game's "Lifeline" feature: it's the main gimmick of the game but doesn't work like it should. Playing through the game I found exactly zero instances where jumping two screen lengths high came in more handy than a regular jump, and in the gigantic boss fights where it could've been useful, I never got the power-up I needed to do that spectacular jump.

The controls for the game take a little getting used to but are fully usable. The graphics are nothing special but they get the job down. The BGM is easily strongest aspect of the game's presentational aspects, with several memorable tunes.

Low G Man is at its heart a fun, playable game for those of us who still have Nintendos and like an occasional sidescrolling action game. But any budding game designer who might be reading this, make sure your game's biggest touted feature gets used.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 08/23/04, Updated 09/28/06