We have to give Mr. Brocco & Co. credit: it really commits to its anti-junk food message. You play a choice of Mr Broccoli or Super Asparagus, two superfoods, as you thwart a plan to take over the world by malevolent coke bottles, hot dogs and burgers. Platformers aren’t the most common vehicle for social campaigning, but Mr. Brocco & Co. has got its placards out.
Unfortunately, the veggies versus junk food messaging is about the most notable thing about Mr. Brocco & Co. Elsewhere, it’s as plain as raw broccoli (hold up, don’t listen kids: broccoli is delicious and part of a healthy diet).
Replace the broccoli for an anthropomorphised animal and it could be any platformer from the ‘90s. Your character can jump and, um, that’s about the limit of it, as you hunt for a swirl of twinkling lights that signal the end of a level. So, you are using your solitary jump to navigate platforms, springboards, crumbling blocks, swinging wrecking balls and spikes. It’s about as unambitious as gaming gets.
Except the platforming isn’t particularly polished. Regardless of which veg you pick – they both play identically – the jump is slow to trigger and feels too ponderous and limited. It took a while to get used to its low arc, as we’d make leaps for moving platforms, only to find we were a good few inches off. You get used to it, but it doesn’t exactly make you yee-hah as you jump off a cliff.
There’s quirks too, which makes some sequences frustrating. Springboards, for example, seem utterly random. Sometimes they will give you a hefty bounce, other times they will be limp as wet lettuce. There doesn’t seem to be a reason for why they’re inconsistent, and we found ourselves using up lives and hearts because we simply got unlucky.
But it’s combat that’s the most inconsistent and unfriendly. As we’ve mentioned, Mr Broccoli and Super Asparagus only have a jump, so the best they can offer is a bottom-bounce on burgers and hot dogs. Mario’s made a career out of it, so we gave it the benefit of the doubt. But Sweet Princess Peach is it terrible. For one, you’re not aiming for the head of the enemy: instead, the collision point is roughly halfway up their body. So, jump into an enemy, and you will often sail over them. You want to be landing on an arbitrary point in the middle of their sprite (about where the patty is in the burger, for example), which never feels right, and often means you’re missing and getting hit by them afterwards.
The weirdo rules surrounding combat continue. Sometimes they will need one hit to kill, other times two. It doesn’t seem to be consistent here either, and you can be celebrating the death of a sandwich, only to find that it’s soldiering on. Which can be a problem if you thought you were safe. If you damage an enemy, they’re invincible for a period (isn’t that the main character’s job?), which means you can be aiming for a double-bounce, only to find that you’ve clipped into them, ready to be dealt a heart’s worth of damage.
There’s more, as the weird collision detection applies to you, too. If you get a stalactite to the head it may not count, because the collision point is halfway down your body, below the florette. So, you can merrily walk through spikes and enemies without taking a hit. It feels like cheating, and there’s no getting used to it.
Squinting and imagining that the combat and platforming are on-point won’t help. Because the levels aren’t much cop anyway. Even if the gameplay was resolved, you would still be left with reasonably plain levels that can’t find interest beyond coloured keys and locks. It’s not that they lack functionality like the gameplay – at a basic level they work – but they’re devoid of inspiration. Anyone who has played more than, say, three platformers in their lives would feel like they’ve done most of Mr. Brocco & Co. before.
All of this gathers together to form a raw quiche of a platformer. It feels underbaked, with a multitude of issues around its combat and jumping. It’s lacking ingredients, either in the levels or in the abilities of the two veggies you control. And most of all, the taste is bland. It can’t generate a flavour beyond ‘straight-forward retro platformer’.
In the end, Mr. Brocco & Co.’s message of ‘eat your veggies’ gets undermined. Our kids will tell us that broccoli is the least flavoursome of anything we could put on their plate, and Mr. Brocco & Co. proves it by being bland, soggy platforming mush.
