Best. Ever. – HoPiKo Review

Loved this game. Gameplay is addicting, rewarding, and fun. People who complain about it being too hard or touchy just aren’t the focused-gamer sort. I’ve now played this through twice, gathering every time and collection achievement possible (not hardcore... yet). With some persistence you can master these levels, and there’s nothing like the feeling of completing a level in the fastest time. I did notice a few drawbacks: Playing for a bit when near the end of battery life introduces an inhibiting lagginess in the gameplay. This could be a device limitation in general—not necessarily the dev’s bad. The end of stage 5-10 forces you to use the back-out button to finish after the credits, which voids your time achievement if you got it. If you’re a completionist like me you see this as some kind of really sadistic joke, but I pray it’s just a dev mistake. There’s a weird jumbled lock in the top right corner of the stage-5 selection screen that’s either a really weird glitch-style easter egg for stage 6 (please-oh-please) or just a real glitch (?). I noticed a few times when my finger did a really weird twitchy loop I was able to jump somewhat backward *through* the platform I was jumping from. I’m not insane or I might have tried to master this to exploit the harder levels for top times. That said, there are *definitely* level hacks that allow you to finish in record time with big shortcuts. Don’t know if you’re supposed to be rewarded for thinking outside the box or if the beta testers just missed some fringe cases, but it’s worth noting that several of the top finishers used these exploits to gain ranking. I noticed that the Game Center tracks progress now. Last time I reinstalled that either wasn’t the case or it didn’t preserve my completion progress. That experience makes me scared to uninstall to test it. Recap, though: rough around the edges, but it’s got it where it counts. This is definitely one of my favorite apps of all time. 5 stars not because it’s 100% perfect, but because it’s so dang enjoyable anyway. Also, I read a review of someone saying the soundtrack was annoying. That person should be drawn & quartered. This soundtrack is $&!#’ing amazing. This app. So good.
Review by Kevinelius on HoPiKo.