The only thing worse than love dying hard is love being taken away. The companion-bot Cherry was living a happy life with her creator, Doctor Shinji Fallon, when the good doctor’s past caught up to her. As a lead scientist for one of the major groups ruling the world in a dystopian future where the dead have their personalities imprinted on robots to work forever, Doctor Shinji knew too much and left on exceptionally bad terms. The idyllic life she’d made with Cherry was never going to last and one day the worst finally happened. With Cherry almost completely destroyed, the situation was bleak until one of Shinji’s old associates found her body and fixed her as best he could, but there are gaps in Cherry’s memory of the days leading to the attack. Even so, she knows Shinji is gone and exactly who took her, so at least there’s a target for all of Cherry’s pent up rage.
There’s a long way to travel through a hostile world filled with robots, guards and creatures that all want to be the one to bring Cherry’s head to their boss, and it doesn’t help that she’s nowhere near strong enough to survive the journey.Cookie Cutteris an action-Metroidvania, though, so there are plenty of upgrades scattered across the interconnected levels to make beating on enemies much more effective. Cherry’s basic move-set is a series of punches and kicks that all combo off a single standard attack button, while more powerful moves involving weapons or skills use up a bit of her attack meter. There’s even an energy-push that does no damage but knocks enemies away for a little extra crowd control, every bit as vital in combat as the heavy-damage attacks. The most powerful ability, though, is the parry, and for the first area at least it’s just about the only move you’ll want to practice.
When an enemy winds up an attack there’s a blue flash, which is the key to hit the parry button. Different enemies have different timing on precisely when that will be, with some requiring instant reflexes and others needing a wait of a few tenths of a second before triggering the parry, but only a few of the strongest creatures in the game require more than a single successful counter to leave them wide open. This lets Cherry pull off an unblockable instant-kill attack, and each enemy has a unique animation for its grisly death. Toss a spearman into the air and yank it down on its blade, hop into the air to pull the wings off a giant bug, cross-wire a biomechanical monster to make it explode, etc. Each kill is gleefully illustrated in a few un-interruptable frames of animation, which is great for avoiding an enemy attack when the screen gets busy. The only down-side is that you’ll be seeing the same animations a lot if you’ve got anything like decent timing, but they’re also quick so the repetition doesn’t have time to grate.
While parrying will always be useful, Cherry eventually builds up weapons and skills enough that beating on enemies becomes not only practical, but vital. Heavy attacks use up an energy gauge while parrying and standard hits fill it back up, so eventually there’s a constant flow of varying moves as you balance the need to keep the energy up with the fun of wailing on creatures with a guitar or chainsaw. Additionally, Cherry will take a lot of damage in her quest but can heal at any time, although that draws from the same energy meter as the strong attacks. Granted, the self-healing isn’t all that fast so doing it in the middle of battle is a bad idea, but sometimes it’s worth blowing off an opening in a boss fight to replenish a few HP rather than pressing the attack.
While the combat has an excellent flow, with a system that rewards you for mixing up the attack types,Cookie Cutter’s platforming doesn’t fare quite so well. Cherry’s jumping movements tend to feel stiff, and in tight zones where a single touch of a spike means instant death, it can be hard to figure out exactly where her hit-box is. Like any good metroidvania there are a variety of platforming challenges ranging from those needing clever use of Cherry’s skills to reach out-of-the-way bonuses to precision gauntlets of extended air-time where touching down is an instant failure that moves you back to the last checkpoint. The level design is good, but platforming through it would feel less like an argument if Cherry was just a touch more maneuverable in the air.
The platforming and combat can both get brutal at times, and while the levels and encounters are well designed, the game usually remembers to put a save point before its major challenges. Needless to say, the times it misses doing this can be more than a little frustrating. There’s nothing forcing you to kill every enemy, so the time it takes to rush back to a challenge area four rooms away doesn’t have to include beating on everything on the way there, but it’s still not fun to re-do an area four or five times while learning the pattern of a single arena’s enemies. The last time this happens in the game is also clearly intentional, with a save point at the bottom of a twenty-second elevator ride featuring nothing at all but a wait for the top floor. Which promptly leads to a brutal gauntlet of exceptionally-strong enemies who love nothing better than to see Cherry waste her time on that elevator again.
Closing Comments:
While rough in places,Cookie Cuttermanages to brawl its way to the top thanks to a strong combat system and wonderfully-bad attitude. The story and world-building are surprisingly well done, and Cherry is a strong hero despite being on a rage-fueled spree of bloody vengeance. While the ending has everything but a “To Be Continued…” dialogue box, the game is a satisfying first entry that does a great job of introducing its cast and detailed setting. Cherry’s world was broken long before she was created, but that’s not really her problem. Doctor Fallon’s abduction destroyed her in more ways than one, and if the world ofCookie Cutteris improved by a rage-fueled robot’s ultraviolent rampage, then that’s just going to be a bonus.
Cookie Cutter
Version Reviewed: PC
