[Review] - Cargo! The Quest for Gravity

[Dateranoth]

Developed by: Ice-pick Lodge

Published by: bitComposer Games, Viva Media

Platform: PC

Players: 1

Rated T by the ESRB

Cargo takes place in a vibrant world where a well meaning but incompetent group of mechanical gods have flooded the planet and broken gravity. This has resulted in humanity being on the verge of extinction, and has left a random assortment of their objects orbiting the earth. The very Gods responsible for humanity's demise have decided to replace us, and all our rubbish, with a new form of life called 'Buddies' . Buddies only have one purpose and that is to have fun. This is where you come in.

You are piloting a blimp searching for salvage when you crash into a nearby island. You are then tasked by the Gods to help these buddies have fun. You do this by kicking them ( they love to fly ) and driving them around on one of your vehicles. The faster the better. Whenever you help a buddy have fun it is added to a running total that acts as your currency. Fun is the only thing the Gods have faith in anymore and they will trade that fun for vehicle parts. Parts can also be salvaged by finding crates around the map.

Gathering Fun by taking buddies for a ride.

Those are the basic principles of how the game is played. As you collect more fun and build better vehicles you can gather fun much faster and also reach places that were unreachable before. Once you have obtained enough fun you can use it to add gravity to the objects orbiting earth and bring them down. Some items just add more buddies to the world, but many of them are plot points that must be removed from orbit in order to progress the game.

A Skyscraper brought out of orbit with the power of Fun!

I was amused from the first moment I was thrown into this world and in fits of laughter the first time I kicked a buddy and it made a strange comment. The construction of vehicles is a fun but often times a difficult affair. You can create almost anything, but they rarely work out as well as you think they will. Luckily, the game has a steady supply of blueprints you can find to build the basics for you. More often than not I found myself using the blueprints as a basis then upgrading and tweaking them into a crazy contraption of my own making. However, I did manage to build the oddball flying rig or two from scratch.

Once you build a decent vehicle the game progresses fairly quickly from that point. You find yourself moving from one odd objective to the next with some very minor puzzle elements. Mostly involving gathering buddies and orientating an object correctly. The game's objectives can be a little bit vague, and there was one part underwater that particularly had me lost. Though, if you just focus on finding buddies and bringing objects out of the sky it's fairly straightforward. The entire game is rinse and repeat of the above with a few objectives for each of the four seasons of the game. Just enough time to get comfortable with one vehicle type and have to move on to another. I do need to point out a problem that they don't make apparent until it happens. The game will progress to the next season when certain conditions are met, and often it takes you to a different location. If you haven't dismantled your vehicle before that you will lose it and the parts associated with it. This was frustrating at first, but I learned to dismantle my rides when I thought something major was going to happen. Not a big deal at all since you can save your own blueprints.

A Heli-Blimp built to haul massive amounts of buddies.

Before I wrap this up I would like to touch on a feature that I didn't use much but found interesting. You can collect fun and bring spare parts down from orbit by gathering buddies and having them dance around a musical symbol. The default tune is included in game, but there is also an editor that allows you to piece together your own music and dance routine for the buddies. So, you can have them jam out and dance to about a minute's worth of whatever tune you like. It's a small but amusing feature that many may find interesting.

Cargo! entertained me for a good 8 hours and though repetitive in places had enough material to keep me playing and wondering what's next. The story is a quirky adventure with a bit of a twist ending that is sure to amuse, and if not, leave you scratching your head thinking "What is going on in this crazy world?" . On top of a crazy story mode it has four Sandbox modes ( one for each season ) that start you with a large number of each of the parts. This gives you a quick way to jump in, build any vehicle you can think of, kick a few buddies around, save, and come back another day. I already found myself going back to add to and experiment with one of my vehicles and see just how many buddies I could fit on it. The game did what I believe it was intended to do and dealt me a healthy dose of FUN. I would recommend it to anyone who enjoys building physics based vehicles and roaming an insane and colorful world.

The game just looks great.

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