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Grapple Dog review: a cute yet frustrating platformerSwinging up the wrong tree
Swinging up the wrong tree
I resentGrapple Dogfor making me resent Grapple Dog. Look at him. He doesn’t deserve it. See his little paws, there, dangling out of that cannon? Tip of the iceberg. You haven’t seen his eagerness, his joie de vivre, as he swings between the many improbably-convenient floating grapple hook platforms of the world. You haven’t witnessed the plucky determination with which he clambers up wall after wall, no matter how many times he’s climbed them before. You haven’t admired his gumption as he bounces atop each polar bear head, or upon the still bouncier belly of every (unwilling) crab.
We started off on much better terms. Sure, it was immediately clear that he’d never move with quite the same precision as a Meat Boy or a Celeste, and yes, I felt it when I targeted robotic goons to jump on. Hopping between platforms felt fine, though, the wider targets calling for less meticulous degrees of control - and besides, I was busy getting acquainted with the grappling hook.
Grapple Dog Trailer 🐶 Release Date Announcement trailer ✨Watch on YouTube
Grapple Dog Trailer 🐶 Release Date Announcement trailer ✨
It’s a decent hook in some regards, but it’s woefully limited. You find it in the opening minutes, amid some sealed ruins associated with an ancient, revered figure known as the Great Inventor. You find your first robot there, too, who of course tricks you into freeing him so he can destroy the world. That sets you off on a race to reclaim five more (sadly non gameplay-altering) ancient artefacts, swinging through classic platforming zones like lava, beach and ice. It’s all very Saturday morning cartoon, complete with a jetpacking scientist bunny who fancies Grapple Dog but is, like, super shy about it. All agreeably cute, for the most part, but right now that’s distracting us from talking about the grappling hook.
Tragically, the main emotion Grapple Dog inspired in me was frustration, because I seemed to spend far less time gleefully swinging than I did painstakingly redoing sections after either dying or missing a critical jump. Every level contains five gems, which are treated like bonus stars in Super Mario except they’re hidden with less ingenuity and are actually vital for progress, because you need to hit escalating cumulative totals in order to access the next world. It would be a perfectly decent structure if so many of those gems weren’t positioned in such a way that fluffing a jump sends you plummeting back past platforms you’ve already navigated half a dozen times. It’s also sometimes far too easy to move past a point you can’t go back to, walling those gems off unless you replay the entire level.
There’s a comparison to be made withDark Souls, which (arguably only just) gets away with repeatedly shoving you through far more gruelling meat grinders because it’s a) brilliant b) tonally-consistent and c), most importantly, fair. The back third of Grapple Dog was packed with moments where I’d die for reasons that didn’t feel like my fault, like brushing a wall that meant a jumping robot could damage me, or being forced into the path of an absolutely hateful flying snake. One time I died at the very, very end of a robo-T-rex chase because I fired myself out of a cannon a split-second too early, hitting part of a spike wheel that the rex was obscuring. Reader, I screamed at him.
There are some (not quite) redeeming creatures. I like the animals you occasionally bump into, from the goats who’ll charge through blocks if you bring them carrots to the insufferably exuberant polar bears who yell at you to jump on them. I also like how the beach world is full of surfer dude otters who just want to nap, as well as endearingly blazed-looking robo sharks and neat gravity-defying ceiling oceans that make for novel traversal when combined with your grappling hook.
At the end of the day, though, it’s repetition that kills the beast. Demanding mastery through repetition can work for platformers, but only if it’s done carefully and thoughtfully, where you don’t have to go slug through long trivial stretches before you get another go at the hard bit. The grappling here feels good when you’re allowed to build momentum, but too many levels are more interested in killing it. I’m sorry, Grapple Dog. Swing on.
