Flockers is the latest game from Team 17 (you know, the guys behind all those Worms titles) and promises to bring something slightly different to the Xbox One.
Essentially a modern day Lemmings set in a Worms weapon factory, it’s a game where you need to guide a flock of sheep out of the factory before they get spun out in the next Worms title as some kind of weapon themselves. It’s a race against the clock to help the sheep escape by giving them orders and praying they don’t get caught up in the fiendish mechanical traps that are found between them and the level exit. Yep, like I said, it’s basically Lemmings then!
But that is by no means a bad thing as if you’re at all familiar with the way Lemmings worked back in the day, then you’ll be right at home with Flockers.
Whilst you’d normally find this type of game at home on a PC, Team 17 have worked the controls to such a high degree that after five minutes of playing Flockers on the Xbox One, you’ll have grasped the control system perfectly and will be assigning jobs to those crazy sheep with ease. There are no more than seven different actions which can be assigned to your troop, and each of these need to be unlocked by getting your flock to pass over the corresponding unlock boxes found scattered around the level. The majority of actions make your sheep work as blockers or see them combine together to make a stairway for all others to walk over, but the addition of ‘jumper’ and ‘super’ have more than a Lemmings ‘floater’ feel to them. The final actions see some exploding sheep help you out a fair bit, whilst that of ‘release’ is available once you’ve realised you’ve made those stupid sheep stop in the entirely wrong place and is needed more than you’ll ever know.
In the first few levels you never feel like you’ll run out of actions at any point and whilst most levels only require you to save one of the pesky blighters (yep, you can sit back and watch the rest die a dodgy death if you like), once you get past the first half dozen or so and the difficulty level ramps up, you’ll find yourself needing to think more and more about your next move. The pause button is indeed your friend and you should hunt it down pronto!
For replayability sake, each level is home to a ‘Golden Sheep’ which can be unlocked from it’s little cage, whilst a number of challenges found in the menu system will see you going back time and time again to unlock rewards, amongst which are a pink sheep once you crush 500 of the little blighters, or a skeleton sheep once you’ve 3*’d 30 of the 60+ levels. The aim of the game may well be to save your flock but half the fun comes about watching them die time and time again.
Flockers looks set to have a great future on Xbox One and is something both old timers and the newer generation of gamer will both enjoy…..especially if you’ve spent any length of time with those darn Lemmings.
We’ll have a full review for you soon but you may wish to pencil the Flockers confirmed release date of 19th September into your diaries.
It’s sure to bring you a hell of a lot of fun.
