Herman has a lot going for it. The beginning (which parodies Braid) made me laugh. The graphics have a lot of style (alternating between cartoony and surreal), the music is good, and the story is amusing. The problem is that the game just isn’t very fun.

Herman wants to escape the drudgery of his life, but various office staff stand in his way. The gameplay is reminiscent of old arcade maze games like Lode Runner or Popeye. Each level has 4 floors connected with ladders and full of a whole lot of enemies. Using jump kicks, a shovel, and tangerines, Herman needs to get through each level to the door at the end. At the end of each level, you’re graded on your performance and gain points which can be used to upgrade your stats.

Herman isn’t a very capable hero. Herman is slow. Really slow. There’s an upgrade to speed him up, but it’s the most expensive upgrade in the store so you’re looking at several levels of skipping other upgrades to save up for it. Herman is also weak. There’s an upgrade to improve the power of his jump kicks, but that’s the second most expensive upgrade in the store and if you purchase it, you’re not purchasing the speed up upgrade. Even if you do power-up the jump kick, the hit detection isn’t the best up close so it’s not as useful as it could be. And as far as I can tell, there are no upgrades for the tangerines (which do little damage) or shovel (which is slow) so they’re going to stay meh the whole game.

Herman’s clunky controls and general weakness are all very frustrating, but what’s especially frustrating is that the game feels like it’s on the verge of being fun but never quite makes it. Despite its flaws, I felt compelled to keep playing the game even though I wasn’t having much fun. The real shame is that with a bit more work, we might have had a game worthy of the hype here. Tighten the controls, increase the speed, add some more variety in level designs, lower the cost of upgrades, and make some tweaks here and there, and you’d have a good game, but as it is now, I can’t recommend purchasing Herman, especially at a 400 point price tag.

Since they’re both platformers, both cost 240 MS points, and both came out at almost exactly the same time, I thought I’d do a double feature and review Chris Unarmed and Johnny Platform Saves Christmas! together.

First up, let’s take a look at Chris Unarmed. I wasn’t too impressed with Chris Unarmed at first – the graphics & music were merely serviceable and the moveset was barren with wall jumping being the extent of your special abilities, but I kept with it and I’m glad I did. As the game progressed, it started adding all sorts of interesting things like doppelganger enemies that copy your every move, wind current mazes, treadmills that let you defy gravity, and more. One part that I thought was particularly neat was towards the end of the game, where you had to make your through some remade versions of earlier levels but in reverse – it was fun seeing how different the levels felt due to the changes.

Chris Unarmed took me about two hours to complete, but keep in mind that I skipped most of the bonus rooms and didn’t even try to get most of the coins. I daresay that unlocking the best ending (gained from getting all of the coins, most likely) would take a lot longer. The game has many difficult segments, but since you have an unlimited number of lives and respawn points are generous, it never becomes too unfair.

Moving on, let’s talk about Johnny Platform Saves Christmas! or JPSC for short.

The first Johnny Platform game was one of the early XBox Live Indie Game gems, a fun vertical platformer with well designed levels that were often as much puzzle as they were reflex challenges. If you liked the first game, you’re going to love the sequel, because it’s a huge improvement in almost every way. Want more levels? JPSC has 100 of them. Want more modes? JPSC has the main game mode as well as a time trial mode where you play as a different character who has an additional power (wall jumping). The levels are bigger and better designed. The new moves are fun to use and the graphics are noticeably better. In short, it’s fantastic. Really, the only way where the JPSC isn’t an improvement is in the price which is higher than the original game, but I’d say it’s more than worth paying a little extra for a game this good.

Both games are worth playing, but if I had to pick between them, I’d go for Johnny Platform Saves Christmas as it’s the more polished of the two titles (understandable since it’s a sequel). On the other hand, at a mere 240 MS points a piece, it wouldn’t break the bank to pick up both of them which is what I’d recommend if you have any love of 2D platformers. They’re some of the best examples of the genre on the service to date.