Comic book super hero Captain Smiley and his sidekick Star are down on their luck. The last issue of the comic book "The Adventures of Captain Smiley" totally failed and both heroes (as well as the rest of the cast from the comic book) are all out of a job. Luckily, the nice people at Twisted Pixel Games notice this and in a fourth wall breaking move they provide them with a temporary base of operations in which Smiley and his friends (and enemies) can stay until they can afford to pay off the loans and re-issue the comic book once again.
In order to make enough money, Captain Smiley's assistant Gerda is sent side jobs in other comics which Captain Smiley has to take (for a cash payment up front of course!). The game takes place over several genres of comics (aside from the modern style of Smiley's own comic), and the graphical style and villains all adhere to the comic in which they appear. Captain Smiley will face off against such enemies as tribal villagers, sexist security guards and cuddly manga animals... all in the name of making his name famous once again!
The game is a hybrid of several action genres where the main focus is on side scrolling platform shooter action. Most of the time in the game is spent navigating through left or right scrolling stages filled with enemies, but this is broken up in almost every stage by a different type of gameplay. A few of the stages turns the game into a rail shooter where Captain Smiley is either running or riding a vehicle from an over the shoulder perspective. While Captain Smiley is still somewhat controllable in order to avoid bullets and such, the main focus is controlling a crosshair and disposing of enemies by target shooting. There are also stages which turn the game into a side scrolling shoot'em up where Captain Smiley can fly over the entire screen and has to eliminate waves of enemies coming in either from the left or the right. Sections of some stages are side scrolling beat'em ups, where enemies have to be fended off until a Twisted Pixel logo is filled up. And finally, there are some quick time events strewn across the game as well where the player has to press the right buttons appearing on screen in order to succeed.
The money Captain Smiley makes during the missions can be used to upgrade his different statistics (such as health, power, slide and more), but also to unlock over 300 bonus items featured in the game. They range from such things as concept art, interviews with the voice actors, full comic books to such unusual things as two extra stages for 'Splosion Man and avatar items.
Aside from the regular cut scenes in the game, there are several which are shot using real actors. Real actors also appear in-game to further convey that Captain Smiley is, in fact, a comic book character.
[source:mobygames]
Distribution : Retail - CommercialPlatform(s) : Xbox 360 (X360)
Links