LocoCycle brings oddball motorcycle combat to Xbox One

LocoCycle  was probably the strangest game I played at E3 this year. It’s a motorcycle combat game that has you racing through levels while avoiding destructive obstacles and battling it out with enemies. Oh, and there’s a Hispanic guy named Pablo whose leg is somehow conjoined to the bike, and the poor guy is screaming and wailing the whole time.

The level I raced through featured dry, desert canyons, and I encountered a host of enemies from mechs with jetpacks to bomb-lobbing SUVs. The combat is simplistic enough, there are two types of attacks – a single target attack and a special area of effect attack, the latter of which uses Pablo as the weapon. I’m not sure how Pablo survives the abuse, but I wasn’t too that concerned about it because I was busy laughing at the situation. There’s also a counter attack which is way too easy to execute successfully, removing any sort of challenge that could be derived from getting the timing right. Maybe it was just that particular enemy type that was easy to counter. Essentially, from what I could tell, the combat boils down to basic button mashing.

You’ll also be navigating the LocoCycle  on the road and utilizing a speed boost at key moments to overcome all the crap the game throws in your path to stop you. A rapid fire gun is also at your disposal for taking out enemies at long range. The enemy type I had the most fun battling with was the bomb-lobbing SUV as it required that I not only maintain my aim to attack, but also to stay nimble on the controls while dodging the bombs. This was the only enemy type that gave me much of a challenge, the rest of them were a breeze.

I walked away from the game with mixed feelings, on one hand I enjoyed the fast-paced action and the random humor inherent of having a guy stuck to your motorcycle yelling in Spanish. On the other hand the gameplay felt shallow, particularly considering this is from the team who brought us the excellent Splosion Man and Ms. Splosion Man games. I’m also not a big fan of the graphics and overall art direction, either. While I do give LocoCycle  props for running at a buttery smooth 60 frames per second, there’s just not much personality to the way the game looks.

I remain confident that the final game will have more to offer, as this dev team has way too much experience designing insane platformers to let this be as tame as it alluded to in the E3 demo. You can expect LocoCycle  exclusively on the Xbox One as a downloadable launch title.

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