Spikey Walls (Wii U) Review

From the very start of Spikey Walls there is already a huge wave of despair that washes over the player. First comes the realisation that 99 cents have been wasted, and then comes the grey eye-sore that is the game's main visual, which is a metaphor for crushing human spirit - a brick wall. A depressing grey brick wall will sear gamers' retinas and cause headaches because it is so busy, complete with the world's angriest flying-thingy flapping its way across an endless horizontal abyss of spiky hurdles.

If the one screenshot hasn't made it clear, Spikey Walls is highly derivative of the gut bustlingly mobile game, Flappy Bird. Make no mistake about it, Spikey Walls is Flappy Bird with a depressing grey skin on it. The only real distinction between the two games is that this is played by pressing a button instead of a Touch Screen, although it is surprising that there is no GamePad touch control option.

For the those who don't know the deep mechanics of Flappy Bird, which Spikey Walls "borrows" from liberally, it is as follows: scrolling screen of hurdles that never stop, slow down or speed up, tap button to flap wings for ascension and don't touch anything to descend and finally avoid the hurdles. For every repugnant hurdle passed, players get a point. The idea is to compete with others and see who can endure the game the longest, making it a bizarre social experiment in who is the most boring man or woman alive. There is nothing else to this game, just to see how many hurdles can be cleared.

Of course, the single most brutal aspect of Spikey Walls is its maddening visuals and its lone tedious piece of music. Since Spikey Walls is a game with a constantly scrolling character and hurdles, it gives eye pains when the background is a static grey brick wall. This is actually the biggest challenge - fighting this background that is at war with the eyeballs and is just exhausting to look at. This game is a soulless cash grab that existed to exploit a flavour of the month that has been forgotten about by many now.