Axel & Pixel Review (Xbox 360)

In general, I like point-and-click adventures like 2K Play’s Axel & Pixel. I’m just more accustomed to playing them for free on my computer. Axel & Pixel isn’t all that different from the flash-based puzzlers that litter cyberspace, despite some really well done and unique art. It’s still a very basic type of game with some really simple action sequences that you’ve played before if you’ve spent any time online.

For what it is, Axel & Pixel is decent. The main characters, a goateed artist named Axel and his dog Pixel, are stylized cartoons that must be led through a series of logic-based puzzles to escape this bizarre dream world they’re trapped in and return home. The problem is, too many of the puzzles completely defy logic and take too long to play out their animated solutions. The action parts aren’t very high on the action either, being more super simple copies of Flash-based games that you’ve played in a browser window before.

Gameplay is rudimentary enough. You have a cursor that you move around the screen looking for highlighted areas. Once you find something that glows orange or has a little icon of feet or a dog’s paw, you can click on it to make something happen. In classic puzzle/adventure style, you must do one thing to make another happen. For instance, water a plant to grow a berry, pick the berry, pick up a rock, smash the berry into juice in a husk you found on the ground, then dump the juice on a monster, so he gets attacked by ants and drops the gear that fits into the mechanism that swings the next thing you need into place. That’s an actual example from Axel & Pixel. In games like this, applying logic to the things you see in your environment is how you solve puzzles.
Axel & Pixel mostly does that, but some of the puzzles don’t make any sense. You’re often best served by simply clicking on everything on the screen that can be clicked and hoping for the best. Sometimes that lack of logic is humorous, but other times it’s just frustrating when you’re stuck and you didn’t notice that one little spot in the corner you could click on. Too often in Axel & Pixel, whimsy gives way to bad puzzle design.

The levels in Axel & Pixel do mix it up a bit, though. There’s a jigsaw-style puzzle to solve in one part. In other places, there are timed “quicktime” events, where you have to hit buttons in a certain order to make things happen. Then there are just pure action levels, accessible in the main menu under “Minigames,” which are also simplistic side-scrolling bits that you’ve once again probably played in a Flash-based PC game. I swear I’ve played that side-scrolling off-roader a million times before.

Axel & Pixel is cute, but not very original. If you really must pay to play a game that would otherwise be available for free on newgrounds.com, go ahead. But we’d rather save our money on the little artsy-fartsy games that try and actually do something new, such as Braid or Lucidity. Axel & Pixel just isn’t worth the money or the space on your Xbox 360’s hard drive.