Excellence dotted with tedium, laced with panic – Alto's Adventure Review

Alto’s Adventure is a lovely endless runner with great art and sound design, satisfying combos, and surprisingly deep interaction between them, wrapped up in a meditation as you descend the mountain slopes on your board. I definitely recommend it if you’re looking for a way to fill time, especially on a larger screen. Smaller screens can make it even harder to tell which way is up for your snowboarder, which brings me to my first complaint: while the token environment changes are nice, you won’t be able to see anything when night falls on the mountain. That rock there is almost the exact same colour as the background, that is if you can see both the rock and yourself, either of whom may be hidden behind trees which for some reason are in the foreground and obscure your view as well as being background objects. These snags can contribute to the feeling that the game respects your time less and less as you play and are challenged by harder and harder goals. “Survive for 2 in-game days straight,” is so much less satisfying than , “complete two triple backflips in one run.” The game also is not at all forgiving of the angle at which you land after being airborne performing these tricks; the number of times I’ve said, “literally any snowboarder who is even approaching the level of skill these characters have would have been able to land at that angle,” is ever increasing. Though the later goals are certainly guilty of feeling like time consuming treks rather than trick trainers, waiting for the world to generate certain numbers of obstacles so you can actually complete a given goal is also frustrating at times, and lends itself to just repeatedly restarting until three rocks show up right after a backflip or bunting grind. Of course, certain goals are more geared to particular characters you can unlock, though it would have been nice for some of those characters to have a reason to be played other than one or two goals for which they’re suited or specifically named in. Paz and Izel specifically feel very unremarkable to me. All in all, I love this game, which is why I can bash it a little. It’s satisfying, artful, and at times, frustrating. It just hasn’t quite figured out which side of frustratingly satisfying or gradually insultingly difficult it wants to tread yet. Everybody will definitely have fun in the game though, and it’s worth the money in every way.
Review by Chetthecookieghost on Alto's Adventure.