Sir Lovelot does a lot right from the outset. It’s a great looking and sounding experience right from the top. The pixelated art style is stylish and colorful, the music is bumping and catchy. Most importantly it also feels great to play. You get that fantastic feedback the moment you start jumping and running around. However once you keep playing you might start seeing the flaws; flaws that thankfully are not enough to break the love spell that it has on you. This is a wonderful platformer that maybe plays it a little too safe and can be slightly too short. However it’s certainly worth your time if you want some bite-size fun.
Sir Lovelot is around 40 levels in length, separated by four distinct worlds. It’s set up in an above view of the world with levels heading along a path; imagine Super Mario and you’re close. These levels start off easy and get progressively harder – pretty much as you might expect.Â
Level design is generally breezy and fun to go through. The title is clearly inspired by old school platformers and it is this which is both a strength and a weakness. A sense of carefree fun pervades over the entire experience and things are super smooth. I never felt like any of the levels were designed awkwardly or that my progress was being hampered by the way things were set up.
However that also means that most of the levels are kind of generic; full of obstacles that everyone has seen a million times. You’ll need to watch out for the spike pits, spinning saws, projectile shooting enemies. And this means that all of the levels kind of just start blending together. That’s not to say they aren’t fun, but there isn’t anything terribly original going on. Sir Lovelot is a very run of the mill platformer.
It helps then that the controls are superb: they’re incredibly tight and responsive and it genuinely feels good to action a double jump or to shoot at enemies. And the best part? I never felt like I died or messed up because of the controls – just my own terrible platforming abilities. It’s a fun time while it lasts.
However Sir Lovelot does not last for too long, with the experience ending before it even really has a chance to begin. It ramps up well, bringing on the challenge as you get farther along. But I was surprised when the conclusion was reached. Yes, there are some collectables and times to chase so that will pad out the runtime, but this may be too short for some players.
The levels that are there look absolutely gorgeous. The pixel art found in Sir Lovelot is very well-done and extremely pleasant to look at. It calls to mind a classic SNES platformer; wildly creative and colorful. The main character is distinctive and cute-looking; in fact that goes for almost every enemy as well. Accompanying these levels is a small but catchy collection of tunes that you can’t help but smile when listening to. Needless to say, this game has huge amounts of charm.Â
One criticism I can level is that while there are challenging levels, the first big chunk of the game is a little too easy. You can just blast through the first world without too much effort, and this can mean that it does occasionally feel a little dull. Even the first boss of the game is a cakewalk that most players will be able to blast through with no problems.
This is especially so because the checkpoints are so generous. You see, when you die, you don’t start from the beginning and more often than not you will respawn just a couple steps from where you died. This is not necessarily bad, but it adds to the fact that Sir Lovelot can be a little too simple to play.
Sir Lovelot on Xbox feels like a weekend game; nothing incredibly special but a well-made experience nonetheless. This is a fun and simple platformer that can provide some good fun for a few hours. It looks great and sounds even better, helped along by controls that are tight and responsive. However I can only really recommend this to fans of the genre, as to anyone else, you won’t be seeing anything you haven’t taken in a million times before.
