The Adventures of 00 Dilly is so aggressively generic that you shouldn’t be surprised to find it’s title character squaring up to you in ripped jeans and a Guess t-shirt. It’s a bewildering game. It’s not the type to make you ponder some intricate question spurred from plot or gameplay but rather why it was ever made, or what was going through the minds of the people who published it. With only a handful of assets and such poor presentation found throughout the couple of hours of mediocre gameplay, I cannot recommend this game to anyone.
The Adventures of 00 Dilly feels like a minigame from a PS2 party game where you shoot a crash-test dummy across platforms, attempting to bounce him into the bullseye target found at the end of every level. There are collectables you can collect along the way, so long as you don’t lose any of your lives as you fall on the ground. The levels begin with you aiming Dilly using vertical and horizontal sliders to hit platforms; it is these which will bounce him across the stage. This is supposed to bring a level of strategy to the game as you must find precisely the correct way to hit the first target before moving and adjusting Dilly mid-air to hit the next target. The gameplay is however flawed right from the start. With so much bounce given from each target, and so much leeway in how you move the character mid-air, I never had to aim Dilly before shooting him. Furthermore, I completely avoided jump-pads I was meant to hit before finishing levels, thereby strolling past any difficulty whatsoever. Later levels add animals that throw objects at you as you descend in the air, or add longer stages with more jump-pads you must hit, but these are uninspired and futile. Those collectables you find are meant to bring up your score and give you new lives. But when the gameplay is so dull, and the only punishment of losing your lives is a single loading screen, why should you care to pick them up?
Unfortunately, there’s little to nothing to be found in The Adventures of 00 Dilly past its gameplay – simply because there was nothing else designed for it. You will hear the same 15-second loop of a song over and over again, and this would be drilled into your head if only the title lasted longer than lunch. The loading screens are just those blue Windows crash screens with an atomic bomb logo set in the middle. Hell, there’s a goat in the game that has maybe three frames of animation, yet unfortunately you’re made to watch a cutscene of him ramming a rock down to help you begin your next bounce. If you were unsure why this game feels like it was just an unfinished and uninspired college assignment, look there for your answer.
Additionally, you will find the same assets of springy mattresses, barrels, jump-pads and seesaws being used throughout each level. With each stage being set in the Grand Canyon, brown is strewn throughout the title like sand caught in your mouth. Those PS1 demakes found in that niche corner of the internet are more flavorful than this game.
00 Dilly, at the very least, does try to be whimsical. Silly sound effects can be heard as you move through the stages, and the game begins and ends with comic book style cutscenes (terrible as they are). You’ll even find a UFO that’s crashed through a few stages. This UFO is the set piece for the best level of the game, which is the final “bonus” level. I won’t spoil it any further, if I’m really spoiling anything at all, but it’s worth noting that it offers variety that really ought to have been offered throughout every level. Furthermore, this idea of three “bonus” levels in addition to the 12 we’re already been given is ludicrous. What’s bonus about adding a few extra minutes of gameplay to the paltry few hours of gameplay we’re given?
It’s not unfathomable for someone to have a modicum of fun with The Adventures of 00 Dilly on Xbox One. I could see myself having simple fun with my friends passing a controller around to finish off levels. Unfortunately, in this dreamt-up scene there are cans of Tuborg in our hands and yet another case for this entire experience feeling like a PS2 party game. I’m unsure of why anyone thought this game should be sold, particularly at the price of £12.49. I’ve played free games like this on my iPod Touch a long time ago, and they offered me a lot more play time. This game isn’t nice to look at, or to hear in the background, and the gameplay is inherently flawed. In fact, The Adventures of 00 Dilly isn’t recommended for anyone to play.
