Lester the Unlikely reviewed

Long ago, in a world where Nintendo Power ruled the world I saw a spread about this game called Lester the Unlikely.  In it I saw wonderful pictures of this nerd doing cool stuff like hanging off ledges and jumping across spikes...keep in mind I was 8 and that's even less of an excuse but I digress.  But aside from that, I heard neither hide nor hair of it anywhere...I know it existed since this spread was one of those mini-walkthroughs but it faded away.  You still can't find a walkthrough on it, even on the internet.  When I got stuck, I had to find a drunken Let's Play to figure stuff out but I'm getting ahead of myself.  So without any further digressions, let's dig in to Lester the Unlikely.

Lester is your stereotypical nerd with his geeky glasses, his ill-fitting hoodie and his love of comic books that he wishes he could have enough money to buy a comic that has 52 different covers.  However, while reading and walking he wanders his way on a dock and then falls asleep which results in him being on a boat.  Then that boat is attacked by PIRATES!  But lucky for Lester he found a life-jacket so he swims his way to an island...that's the PIRATES headquarters!  Now Lester must find his way back home, send the pirates to hell, save the natives from the pirates reign of terror and get some with hot island girl Tikia.

Now there is something that sets this apart from other games and it's pretty much a love it or hate it thing.  In the beginning, every time Lester sees something dangerous and new, he'll either run away screaming, flat-out tell you no or hump the air for some reason.  It's a bit annoying at first but the further you go in the game, the less he does it until he's not doing it at all.  Like it or not, this has some decent character development and there's only 4 or 5 cutscenes including the first and last ones so with simple posture changes and less screaming, a wealth of character comes flowing out.  I played it all just to see Lester succeed since he's someone that I wanted to succeed.

Then there's the gameplay....utterly broken and laggy.  You can move in one direction and jump in the same direction and that works, it's not great but it works.  Then comes the question of turning around or jumping straight up and the flaws come flying out!  Turning around takes a couple seconds to do and when you're fighting something or running away that's literally the difference between life and death which I've found out the hard way.  And jumping straight up to grab on to ledges is also a pain since they're not next to the walls most of the time so you have to line your jump exactly or waste precious time missing. 

This game has great ideas but they're not executed in the best way.  Lester is likeable enough, mostly cause I see myself in him a bit too much.  The rotoscoped animation is wonderfully animated even if the other graphics don't really compare.  It's just a pain to play and the difficulty gets really high up there at times.  This should not have been a video game in the first place, it would have work much better as a book or even a movie.  As a game however, it's worth playing to an extent.

5/10