I’m a huge fan of rhythm games, so when the Antro demo first showed up on my radar I instantly wanted to play it. It made me hungry for more with its mix of Temple Runner + musical rebellion influences. It’s a rather short game, but it also comes at a low cost and doesn’t overstay its welcome.
ℹ️ Reviewed on Xbox Series X | Review code provided by PR. This review is the personal opinion of the writer.
| Developer | Gatera Studio |
| Publisher | Selecta Play, Astrolabe Games |
Things I liked!
- Spanish Hip-hop | Let’s start with the best thing Antro has to offer: its soundtrack. It has a unique flavour of Spanish hip-hop I wasn’t at all familiar with, but it’s extremely efficient at setting a tone and matched the run & dodge gameplay well. I found the first track in the game to be my favourite of the whole bunch. Have a listen here:
- It’s easy to pick up | You jump, slide or hit things with an attack. There are no complicated controls here; all you need to do is perform the right input at the right time and you’ll be performing some slick parkour tricks in no time.
- Post-apocalyptic setting | The game starts by telling you that only 1% of humans survived some kind of catastrophe, and now all survivors live underground. You play as Nittch, a courier who finds himself enlisted by the resistance, and you’ll help them overthrow the dictator who’s trying to exploit the few humans who are left.
- Optional collectables | I like collecting things in game,s and here you’ll have 15 objects to find, a few graffiti spots to tag and a devices to hit with correct timing during the rhythm levels. Getting all of these will give you all achievements except for one (the last one requires beating each rhythm level without getting hit once). It’s too bad they don’t show which collectables you missed in the “Load Level” screen though, it could have very easily added a symbol for each one so we’d know which level to replay for a missed item, graffiti or destructible.
Mixed & disliked!
- Not enough rhythm levels | There are only 16 levels in Antro, and only half of them are the rhythm runners you’d expect after playing the demo. The others are mostly about exploration and finding hidden collectables so you can learn more about its world, but that’s not exactly the game’s strong suit.
- Trial & Error | I like my rhythm games with some element of reflexes or visual timing, and that’s sadly not something where Antro excels either. There are a lot of segments that come down to pure memorisation after some trial-and-error attempts. Most of this is caused by poor visibility. The game is too dark and its obstructions aren’t highlighted in a different colour (like say, Mirror’s Edge does excellently). Some of the jumps are also very specific about their timing, and you’ll need to fail a few times just to get the momentum down.
- English Voice acting | The english voice acting lacks proper emotion and brings the lines in a way that doesn’t fit the moment. He doest shout out “Nittch, they killed you” with every single death though and it got on my nerves quickly.
- Some minor bugs at the time of writing | NOTE: I expect most of these to be fixed soon, but still bears mentioning for those who want to pick it up now. I had some issues, like a jump being impossible and requiring me to restart the entire level. A crash to the Xbox hub, but this seems to happen with a lot of games recently and may not be the developer’s fault at all. And some weird clipping errors or sound effects that kept playing after a death. Nothing too serious. The achievements were also still only in Spanish and not translated into English or other languages yet.
How long did I play the review before publishing? 2 hours
How long to beat the story? 1 hour and a half
How many Achievements did I earn before publishing? 810/1000G (32/34)
How long to achieve 1000G | about 2 hours
You’ll love this game if you like these | Temple Run, Aerial Knight’s Never Yield
CONCLUSION
Score: 67/100
I liked Antro, but not as much as I expected it to. Only 50% of its short runtime is spent in the rhythm runner levels that are its main selling point and the story didn’t manage to land. It’s still worth picking up for a single playthrough, at the very least to experience its catchy soundtrack.
Robby lives and breathes video games. When he’s not playing them, he’s talking about them on social media or convincing other people to pick up a controller themselves. He’s online so often, he could practically list the internet as his legal domicile. Belgian games-industry know-it-all.
