The evil space "Pirats" (they're pirate rats. Get it?), in their search for a planet made of cheese, have crashed their ship on a world inhabited by skull-faced characters known as the Raskulls. To repair it, they need the powers of the Shiny Stone, owned by the Raskull King. The story revolves around the Raskulls thwarting the plans of the Pirats.
The gameplay is essentially Super Mario Bros. meets Collapse. As you run and jump through the levels, you will occasionally find your path blocked by...blocks...that you must zap with a wand-like tool to destroy. If multiple blocks of the same color are touching, zapping one will destroy them all. There are also powerups such as the fireball (with which you can dash through and destroy blocks without zapping them), and the lightning (which instantly zaps out several blocks in a row, including the normally hard to break black ones).
Aside from the powerups there are "boosties" that you collect from destroying blocks, and can find in jars lying around. Boosties charge up a frenzy meter. Activating frenzy mode speeds up your character for a short time (unless you're collecting lots of boosties as you go) and allows them to zap blocks much faster, but be careful. Getting smashed by falling blocks will drain the frenzy meter.
Few of the levels are as simple as "get to the end." Every chapter introduces a new spin on the existing game mechanics. For example, you might be required to get to the end with a limited number of zaps. Or you might be required to get objects down to platforms without dropping them too far at a time. Or you might have to do BOTH of these with an insanely unfair time limit.
Some special challenges require you to complete a course without running out of frenzy power, while others require liberal use of frenzy mode to finish in a time limit. Frenzy mode and the powerups are also absolutely vital if you want to complete any of the race levels.
Unfortunately, despite this wide variation in level goals, Raskulls does suffer from one glaring flaw. Most of the levels are far too easy. The ones that aren't too easy? They're controller-snappingly frustrating. I was actually glad when I finally failed a challenge for the first time, assuming that the difficulty curve was finally catching up to me, but this quickly dissolved into annoyance after I failed it several more times before I finally completed it. There doesn't seem to be much middle ground in terms of difficulty. Everything is either way too easy, or way too hard. (I'd say about 8 super-easy to every 2 super-hard.) It's great and all that you get a feeling of accomplishment from clearing the hard ones, but you have you ask yourself if it was really worth the headache.
The second and most major problem is that this game is mind blowingly short. It's only 3 chapters long! I mean, sure the later 2 world maps are on the larger side, but I was still able to beat the main story in less than a day. After that, the only things left to do are complete any remaining challenges (which you probably left unfinished for reasons mentioned above) and , if you're the type, go for all the achievements. There's also Xbox Live multiplayer, which I have yet to try, but it looks like it's just more races.
Those complaints aside, though, Raskulls is a fairly entertaining game. It's the kind you play with a friend or two and take turns dying during the hard challenges while you make fun of the guy who screws up the easy ones.
The gameplay is somewhat original, characters are creative, and the dialog and jokes are lighthearted and funny, while maintaining just an occasional very slight hint of dark humor. However, there are spikes in the difficulty and it is an extremely short- although enjoyable- experience.
Raskulls gets an 8/10
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