Nostalgia is a powerful marketing tool that can be used to easily garner excitement for a new media property. Playtonic Games leaned on the nostalgia that gamers had for Banjo-Kazooie to reach an unprecedented Kickstarter fund of 2 million pounds for their upcoming project, Yooka-Laylee. Nostalgia can also be a double-edged sword.
While half of the people picking up Mighty No. 9 felt that it was not the Mega Man sequel they wanted, the other half felt it was outdated and added nothing new to the genre. The delicate balance between capturing the magic of old games and injecting new mechanics, graphics, and overall flavor into the mix proves too difficult for a lot of the developers that try. FreezeME by Rainy Night Creations is of the latter.
As soon as I saw the first marketing image for FreezeME, I prayed that this game would be more than a nostalgia cash-in. I wanted it to be a game that utilized the dead 3D platforming genre, without the problems that the N64 and PlayStation struggled with. Within seconds of booting up the game, I was made brutally aware that this was not the case. FreezeME is not a game that is evocative of a time lost to the annals of gaming, it is a game stuck in the terrible mechanics of that time.
Graphically, FreezeME is on par with Banjo-Kazooie and Super Mario 64. The problem is those games came out twenty years ago. There are no soft edges on any ledge, character, or stationary object. Everything has the jagged, polygonal look of when polygon counts were actually a thing. And I will be the first to say that graphics are not the most important issue in a game. But the late ’90s era is not the art design a developer should pull from.
The game starts in a large hub world and directed me to collect red and green coins to eventually save my stolen pet. I thoroughly enjoy the collect-a-thon style of gameplay. I eagerly dove into sliding, running, jumping, and collecting all over this world. At first I was having a pretty good time, outdated visuals aside, until I ran into the invisible walls.
Invisible walls are just as they are named, invisible barriers that are put into the code that stop the player from entering an off-limit area. However, these invisible walls did not make any sense in the context of their placement. For example, I could not jump over a small wooden fence placed in the center of the level. Now I could easily walk around the fence, but I could not leap over something the equivalent height of my kneecap. I ran into these all over while trying to climb or traverse the level.
The enemies also have hit boxes that are incorrectly proportioned. Attacks are done with a simple one button press, but I continuously took damage as I had to get way too close to actually attack the enemies. If I started the kick too soon, I would phase through the enemy without doing any damage. If I did it way later that I should have, I would take a hit and kill the enemy. As each collectible caused me to gain an extra heart of life, taking damage was only an unnecessary annoyance throughout the game.
After completing certain tasks, I was transported to another world that told me what my actual tasks were. I had to re-enter the level I was just in, and in a time-trial fashion, collect a gold block as quickly as possible. This made absolutely no sense and felt like a waste of my time. I was already in the level, but now I had to wait to transfer back and forth for no reason. My anger slowly built as I realized more and more that this game lacks a central point. The collectibles restore health, but with almost 200 per level they are pointless to “collect.” The level structure made me feel like I was wasting time transferring around rather than playing the game. And the invisible walls made everything a chore. This completely leaves out the worst culprit, the controls.
FreezeME not only looks like a game released in 1996, it also plays like a game from 1996. I tried the controls inverted and regular, and nothing felt correct. This is because the game uses a system modeled after the single analog stick from N64. The camera swings around with the slightest tap on the stick, and is in no way helped by the auto-correct function. This, by the way, is set to off by default. The movement while underwater was some of the worst I have ever experienced. It was a constant fight just to move forward a few inches.
Summary
I think FreezeME is a game that should be avoided. From redundant level design to terrible visuals and controls, this game does not do anything special. While the game is not unplayable, it is uninspired and uninteresting. The 3D platformer died off for a reason, and FreezeME has just reminded me as to why.
Joshua was a regular ICXM contributor between 2016–2017, publishing 42 articles across game reviews, and Xbox news. Their work focused on hands-on reviews, platform commentary, and breaking-news reporting during the Xbox One X launch year and Microsoft’s wider Play Anywhere / UWP gaming initiative.