Scaler

"This lizard deserves more recognition."

You know, these underrated, hidden gems are sure taking up a lot of my time. Like a lot of other hidden gems, Scaler is one of those games that most people look at and don't think twice about. Also, Scaler was a budget title.

It started for me when I went to my local Blockbuster and saw this game on display for twenty dollars to own instead of rent. I looked at the back of the box and seemed intrigued. This game looked fun by the description on the back of the box. Unfortunately, I didn't have the money at that point in time. So a few weeks later (before Christmas 2004), I had money and saw this game again at Blockbuster and I purchased it. I drove home and played the game.

I can certainly say this about Scaler: it was a twenty dollars well spent.

Story 10/10

Well, it's very original and seems to fall together nicely. It starts with a 12 year-old boy named Bobby Jenkins at the home of a big scary drill Sargent named Bootcamp (Bobby called him Boot-Lick as a joke). Bobby is captured and being shocked in a chair for an interrogation and then he ends up flying forward into a new dimension full of lizard creatures. In the process, he became a lizard creature and figured out that Bootcamp and a select few other adults were spying on the humans. Bootcamp and the lizards turned out to be doing the bidding of the lizard king Looger. Bobby ends up meeting another lizard man he teams up with to help save the lizard dimension from Looger's oppression and the real world from being taken over.

Gameplay 10/10

In the game, you have to collect lizard eggs to help stop Looger from getting them first, and to do this, you must travel to all kinds of fantasy environments, defeat lizard bosses, and learn how to shape-shift into new creatures to get lizard eggs that were out of reach before. For example, early in the game, you get to transform into a koala-type thing that rolls balls that explode. You can transform into them back and forth, and when you get new transformations, you get to become new creatures.

But shape-shifting isn't the only thing in the game, because you do fight enemies. Unlike in most other games, you can have a lot of fun fighting enemies in circle-shaped barrier arenas to continue the game. The enemies, at first, appear by ones. Taking them on is easy, but later in the game, you have to battle with more enemies at once and the enemies only get stronger and stronger. To fight them, you can just run out and attack them with your claws and/or tongue. If you get shape-shifting abilities, you can also use those if you want. But when the enemies get stronger, you can buy upgrades from your friend using klokkies, such as iron claws and a few other abilities. If you're also someone who likes Sonic, then you might like the vine riding ability you start off with, which is like grinding on rails, but Scaler makes it cooler somehow.

But it doesn't end there! New transformations means new gameplay experiences that you couldn't access before. You even need to master the transformations to defeat the bosses (I don't want to give anything away, so I won't tell you any other transformations or any bosses).

Sound and Music 8/10

The sound effects are very good and suit everything well. The voice acting suits every character and nothing seems to be wrong with the sound department.

But the music is different; it's not bad or anything, but it's usually subtle or nonexistent. Sometimes it stands out, and sometimes it doesn't. I mean, just listen to the title screen music for an example. See what I mean?

Graphics 10/10

I think they're really nice graphics. The fantasy worlds you travel through look so awesome and inviting. The colors are coordinated in the environments very well. The characters are also designed well. For example, Scaler is colored with complementary colors (blue and yellow-orange, which is almost orange). The other transformations themselves follow the same color scheme. And the environments are designed with nice, analogous colors.

Replay Value 6/10

When you beat the game, you can collect the orbs in the game to get an alternate ending. I won't spoil it for you, but the normal ending will feel like a disappointment unless you collect all the orbs, because the alternate ending is quite different. Once you beat it and face the normal ending, you might feel like you don't want to play anymore. But I'm sure others who loved and mastered the game will, without hesitation, get the other orbs.

Either way, Scaler is a great game in the long run and definitely worth picking up. It was a budget title since it was released (twenty dollars was the original price), so how could you go wrong?

My Grand Total: 8/10

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 03/06/06