Keeping up with the Keflings: XBLA Review
A Kingdom for Keflings is one of the first games to utilize the new Avatars on Xbox Live and makes “you” a playable character, er, Giant. This is easily a game that could be overlooked and forgotten or found and obsessed over. Take your pick. Anyone who liked Animal Crossing or the first Sim City will definitely get into Keflings.
What can I say, I got suckered into Keflings after playing the trial to the point I had to pay. I didn’t mind since I had 2200 MS Points and Keflings was only 800. It is a quick and small download. What is it? If you imagine Warcraft 2 without the fighting then you pretty much have A Kingdom for Keflings.
So just who or what are these Keflings? Keflings are the people who live in the kingdom that you control. Think of Keflings like Lemmings without the falling over the cliff part. These little guys and gals will chop, mine, gather, move, and get smarter to advanced the Kingdom and it’s up to the player to put them in place. I’m suddenly hearing the Charles in Charge theme song, oh God!
During your tenure you will be surrounded with pretty good graphics and somewhat cheesy but decent sound. If there was any gripe I had with the game it’s the amount of “slowdown.” The winter time brings snow and it makes the game just crawl and since the graphics are not that fantastic I was pretty surprised. As mentioned, the music is kind of ho-hum but custom music collections are able to be used.
Keflings starts with an easy tutorial on how to gather materials and an introduction to Blueprints. Blueprints are needed to advance your kingdom and are really the ultimate goal in the game; think of Pokemon’s “Gotta catch them all” motto.
New Blueprints mean new housing, schools, workshops, etc. It is very simple with each building being put together like blocks on a grid. Once you have enough resources (wood, stone, etc) you just build the amount of pieces needed and put them together. Then, right before your eyes, the Kool-Aid man jumps out…er… I mean your building appears! When you get farther into the game you will have to build a school to get a “Smart Kefling” to run a new shop or have one shop to get another. It’s really a standard progression type.
The kingdom expands in size when you build new homes but they will only be populated if you have a heart to activate them. Hearts are items that are earned like a reward for different tasks. The town mayor presents various objectives to obtain allowing for new buildings, new Keflings (more), and even special objects/upgrades. I was happy that the tasks have not been very monotonous and I’m about 5 hours in.
Where is the fun or obsession? Simple, building the Kingdom is a good time. I pretty much immediately dumped my tutorial game for a new one. I just had to have all the houses in one spot and I had to make the Stone Cutter much closer to the stone and how could I not put the schools near each other! Like, omg! Yes, the obsession is how simple it is to build your empire and tweak your kingdom. Built something and need to move it? Break it, harvest the resources, and build a new one! Keflings not doing their jobs? Kick them all over the screen! Town low on vegetation after removing all the trees? Make new ones and even have them shaped like animals!
Sure, Keflings is not a rubiks cube, does not take much skill, and is not as complete as Sim City but it is a generally enjoyable game. For anyone who might want a simple game that will allow them to just kick back and “put something together” then pull out the wallet and throw down your 800 points.
Keflings is also multiplayer allowing friends to build a Kingdom together. It could be pretty neat to get all the avatars together at once and kick the Keflings around but my thought is that most people will pass on that feature.
In sum, Keflings is an Avatar enabled city building sim that is quite fun but the “hardcore” should probably pass.
Options: 7/10
Not much on this since it’s pretty simple. Using your own music is a nice feature.
Production: 6/10
Presents itself well but there could have been a lot more explanation of various buildings, items, etc.
Graphics: 7.5/10
Nicely done for an XBLA game and I will not count the slow down in here
Sound: 6.5/10
Fairly suitable but not much to it.
Gameplay: 7/10
Progression is nicely done but the slowdown in the game/graphics are pretty nasty.
Difficulty: 4/10
Not a difficult game but a little strategy can make it a lot more manageable.
Replay: 4.5/10
Most will play through once and be done with it.
Overall: 6/10
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Tags: Game Reviews, Xbox 360, Xbox Live
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2 Responses to “Keeping up with the Keflings: XBLA Review”
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December 13th, 2008 at 12:10 am
I don’t know if I can survive anything resembling Animal Crossing again. I’m forcibly resisting buying the new Wii version. I had to go to a 12 step program to stop it the first time.
December 15th, 2008 at 8:04 am
At least this quite a bit less expensive and not nearly as addicting.