In it for a Minute | Minutes Review

<p>Media criticism&comma; especially video games&comma; is usually a comparative art form&semi; you compare a title to its forebears&comma; both chronological and spiritual&comma; and pass your judgment&period;  &OpenCurlyDoubleQuote;<em>Resident Evil 5 <&sol;em>wasn’t as good as <em>Resident Evil 4<&sol;em>&comma;” critics cry&period;  ”<em>DOOM <&sol;em>is everything <em>Wolfenstein 3D <&sol;em>was and more&period;”  Most games have some sort of contemporary that provide a defined source of measure&comma; an origin point for the resulting score&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p><em>Minutes<&sol;em> is one of those games that defies this sort of rule for a number of reasons&colon; it’s utterly unique in its design and presentation&comma; offering up hints of its inspiration&comma; but never slavishly ascribing to any one particular point of influence&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>The first title from Richard Odgen’s Red Phantom Games&comma; <em>Minutes <&sol;em>all but thumbs its nose at Ogden’s racing-heavy resume to deliver a minimalist arcade game that doses out its strangeness in 60-second chunks&period;  You control a free-roving circle with two simple goals&colon; collect all of the colored items and avoid all of the black items&comma; and do it all without dying in a minute&comma; like a time-crunching <em>Ikaruga<&sol;em>&period;  It starts simply enough&comma; with horizontal and vertical lines slicing across the playing field at manageable distances&comma; allowing you to easily fill up the goal-oriented stars that unlock further levels&period;  However&comma; like all good games&comma; the layers of simplicity are slowly peeled away level by level&comma; revealing the brutally hard core at the game’s center&period;  Within a few levels&comma; your circle is expanding and contracting at your command&comma; trying to navigate an increasingly chaotic field of twirling shapes that will help and harm you within a fraction of a second&period;  It’s a dead simple idea&comma; and one that never wears out its welcome due to the aggressively short levels&semi; by the time you realize you’re getting drained on the frantic speed of the game&comma; you&&num;8217&semi;ve finished a level and you can put the controller down&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p><a href&equals;"https&colon;&sol;&sol;cdn&period;bagogames&period;com&sol;wp-content&sol;uploads&sol;2015&sol;02&sol;05025816&sol;Minutes-3&period;jpg"><img class&equals;"alignright size-large wp-image-77952" src&equals;"https&colon;&sol;&sol;cdn&period;bagogames&period;com&sol;wp-content&sol;uploads&sol;2015&sol;02&sol;05025816&sol;Minutes-3-1024x576&period;jpg" alt&equals;"Minutes™&lowbar;20150121134929" width&equals;"620" height&equals;"349" &sol;><&sol;a><&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>The game itself is structured an awful lot like a mobile game &lpar;a characteristic shared with another PS4&sol;Vita title <em>Escape Plan<&sol;em>&rpar;&comma; with stars earned in each level unlocking later levels&comma; and even a daily challenge which pits you against other players for leaderboard supremacy&period;   It feels odd on the sizable handheld or your living room television&comma; but it works really well and is oddly prescient of where gaming is headed&comma; with consoles becoming multimedia hubs that you use for less interactive forms of entertainment&comma; as well as games&period;  They’re becoming information filters&comma; much like smartphones&comma; and <em>Minutes <&sol;em>and its mobile-game sensibilities makes perfect sense in that context&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>Aesthetically&comma; the game is simple and minimalist&period;  The lines and shapes swirling around each other look like a Powerpoint template come to life&comma; cast over oddly beautiful backgrounds&comma; and set to a thumping techno soundtrack&period;  The music itself adds immensely&comma; as the game becomes entangled within the rhythms and starts to influence and assist you&period;  This is not the sort of audiovisual presentation that will bring your Playstation 4 or even the Vita to their knees &lpar;the game is available on both as of this review&rpar;&comma; but the game commits wholly to its razor sharp simplicity&comma; and reaps all of the benefits&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p><em>Minutes <&sol;em>may not be revolutionary or a particularly deep game&comma; but its instantly accessible simplicity&comma; clean presentation&comma; and easily dosed bites of gaming goodness make it a fun&comma; short-term diversion to fill in those tiny gaps of time when you can’t load up a full-sized game&comma; but still need a quick diversion from real life&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;