It may sound weird but you can find enjoyment in a truly bad game. Games like Ride to Hell: Retribution may be awful in every way but it’s because of its flaws that Ride to Hell is enjoyable to watch and even, somehow, fun to play . . . with friends . . . and alcohol. Most of the fun in Ride to Hell was down to how buggy and broken it was and how it tried to convey an epic storyline while also having some of the worst voice acting and stunted delivery you could ever find in a game.
Ethan: Meteor Hunter isn’t just a bad game, though, it’s also an extremely boring one. The game starts with a small introductory cutscene that tells us why Ethan wants to hunt down some meteors which shows Ethan, who is a mouse, and his little mouse family arguing before they are squished by a meteor. Some evil mouse scientist with a remote control laughs, Ethan shakes his fist at a rock and then the tutorial commences.
It was from this point that I knew Ethan: Meteor Hunter wasn’t going to be a fun time. Immediately, the game’s poor graphics and awkward controls became apparent. Visually, I can only describe the game like how I describe the original ‘Splosion Man. Remember how ‘Splosion Man’s textures just looked like textures you would find in an original Xbox game but rendered in a much higher resolution? Well, Ethan somehow manages to recreate that feeling as well as somehow looking much uglier than Twisted Pixel’s 2009 game.
Each texture and character model looks awful for a game in 2016. Every environment is a dull brown or grey with occasional hints of color appearing when you see a fire platform or a meteor platform—fire platforms crumble after a second and meteor platforms switch between static and moving. Every model and texture looks like something you would find bundled for free with a paid game engine, like GameGuru or Unity.
Control-wise, Ethan switches between feeling too stiff and overly loose. When you’re just walking from side-to-side Ethan feels a little stiffer and awkward compared to, say, Super Meat Boy or Not a Hero but when you’re jumping Ethan feels overly floaty. What’s even worse is that during the platforming sections—yes, there are different types of stages—Ethan has access to the unexplained power of manipulating objects with his mind. You need to have a token before you can use this power, however, the game always gives you just enough tokens directly before the section that requires it. While this power can help you get through the stage, the controls are awful while using it. Not only do manipulated objects randomly decide when they want to be placed but moving the platforms to exactly where you need them is frustrating due to how sensitive the controls are. I did change the sensitivity, I changed it constantly, but every setting felt as though it was designed for a mouse—pun not intended—or the tiny analogue nubs of the PSVita.
Other sections are not as bad, though. The flying SMUP sections, while short and still boring, are passable although the lack of background music and plain sound effects, which are also problems in every other stage, make these stages a chore to play. You fly in an awful looking metallic plane and shoot missiles at turrets whilst avoiding fire and fans. It’s just as boring as the rest of the game.
If you like a game for nothing more than a steady framerate, however, Ethan: Meteor Hunter may be your kind of game. While it doesn’t play or look very good, Seaven have managed to keep Ethan locked at a consistent framerate, so that’s good.
Summary
It’s hard to find anything to say about Ethan. The stages consist of boring, repetitive platforming and the occasional object manipulation puzzle. I can honestly say that Ethan: Meteor Hunter is not worth your time or money unless you really like games that feature poorly rendered mice.
Lewis is a games journalist, freelance gaming and consumer-tech journalist. They contributed 344 articles to ICXM between 2015–2017, focused on opinion pieces, game reviews, Windows and PC, and Xbox news: has since served as Editor-in-Chief at StealthOptional and Gaming Editor at MSPoweruser, with bylines at Gfinity Esports and FRVR.