Puppeteer (PS3) – The Review

Puppeteer is the story of the disembodied soul of a boy named Kutaro traveling through a magical world on the moon as a puppet. He's on a quest to rescue the fractured pieces of the White Moonstone from the evil Moon Bear king and his 12 generals (other animals derived from the Chinese Zodiac). Kutaro gets help from a few companions (allowing limited couch coop as you can play as "the helper") as he travels through 7 acts of this (surprisingly long) narrative.

Puppeteer is a PS3 exclusive that prides itself on its innovation (even 3D visuals with those eager early adopters that invested in the home experience). The visual style of this game is stunning. The game presents each level and cutscene as if it were a theatrical play with scene changes occurring almost constantly. This constraint makes story telling amusing as it portrays pirate ship battles at sea, top down car races through an vast desert, or floating castle battles orbiting the moon all within the confines of a virtual stage. It really is a amazing show to watch.

What's not so amusing is the length of the game's cutscenes. Your mileage may vary but we at the Dojo grew tired of 5 minute long cutscenes bookending each level about halfway through the game. It took us around 10 hours to beat the game however we would not be surprised if around half of that was actually playable.

The gameplay is remarkably reminiscent of Little Big Planet for us as you play essentially as Sackboy with floaty platforming and questionable hitboxes for combat. That's not to say it's not fun (it really is) and the levels frequently break up the pace with the occasional vehicle sequence or boss battle -- we should mention however that all boss battles unfortunately require a multi-step quicktime event to finally win which, in a game full of novel ideas and humor, was for us a bit disappointing.

Your primary mode of transportation however will be the magical scissors, called Calibrus, which allow you to fly through most levels provided you're cutting down the scenery or occasional purple baddie along the way. Some of the later levels combine breakaway environments and cuttable seams (which function as high speed rails similar to Bioshock Infinite) that makes for an impressive, but daunting, platforming experience.

All in all, Puppeteer is a fantastically unique game in the way it presents its story and is accessible to almost all gamers as it slowly ramps up the difficulty over its 21 levels. The game clearly doesn't take itself too seriously and if you're willing to enjoy the long winded cutscenes, there's a lot to enjoy here.

Graphics The game is innovative by constaint and wildly inventive for much of the story telling (we particularly enjoyed the high altitude fight with the dragon in the middle of a lightning storm). It's clearly not aiming to compete with the next gen consoles but is comfortable as the spiritual successor to Little Big Planet. Graphics: 90

Gameplay The gameplay is immediately familiar for most gamers and does a good job of introducing more complex towards the back half of the game. We were disappointed though that for all the imagination this game brings to the table that it resorted to simple quicktime events for its epic boss battles. Gameplay: 80

Replayability The game does its best convince you to revisit through unlockable bonus levels you wouldn't otherwise see until you unlock all of the possible heads for your character. However, despite how impressive some of the boss fights and later levels are, you couldn't pay us enough to sit through the long winded cutscenes all over again. Replayability: 70

Overall score: 80

If you're looking for a cute, couch coop experience, Puppeteer is a strong option.