XNA Game Review: Machiavelli’s Ascent
Title: Machiavelli’s Ascent
Creator: Naturally Formed Studios
Genre: Platformer
Price: 200 Points
Countries: Canada, France, Italy, Spain, United Kingdom, United States
Languages: English
Publisher’s Description
Better than bottled water. Experience being a negatively buoyant jellyfish who wants nothing more than for the sweet warm sun to kiss his hydrostatic skeleton. Use flow controls to glide through the ocean’s depths as you ascend in this liquid platformer. Maintain your ascent by gathering melodious nutrient bubbles as you play, chaining collisions to build up aurally stimulating combos.
What We Think:
This game is so fast-paced, it may be best suited for the mind-reader Kreskin to resolve how to negotiate where the next “food source” that propels your jellyfish avatar upward may be in order to solve it.
Not that that is a bad thing – but it really keeps you on your toes. Er, tentacles. One of the most challenging/frustrating elements is that missing a food source means starting back at the beginning; there is little margin for error and so you feel a bit like you are in a fever-dream where you are running from an unknown assailant and somehow your feet are just not able to contend with gravity sufficiently to pick up any steam.
I can’t see it isn’t a standout in the XNA catalog, but it isn’t a game that rewards the gamer sufficiently to merit more than a few sustained minutes of nerve-battering excitement.
So points for design, innovation and implementation, but a few less because it’s just too damn exasperating.
Rating: 
Would you be interested in playing this type of game?
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