originally posted on www.pixelcore.co.ukEver wanted to live out the truck scene in The Matrix: Reloaded? Well now you can, inoriginally posted on www.pixelcore.co.ukEver wanted to live out the truck scene in The Matrix: Reloaded? Well now you can, in Clustertruck. It even comes without the rubbish plot!Clustertruck is a game about truck drivers who’ve never driven a truck before and are completely oblivious to their immediate doom. You, the hero, or a guy who’s finally realised transporting cargo over dangerous terrain isn’t worth it, must jump, dodge and weave your way to the finish line.Performance on my machine was great and I didn’t experience any frame drops or hitching. What I did experience though was a lot of crashing. I never experienced any crashes while playing, but starting up the game was a nightmare and more often than not, crashed to the desktop. Hopefully, this is something that will be fixed on launch. There’s not much more to say about performance, as the settings are the standard unity ones. There’s a few settings in game that allow you to turn off things like bloom and V-sync though. Aesthetics of the game are minimal and I’d more than likely be saying the same thing if I was running the game on a potato powered calculator.The soundtrack for Clustertruck, is awesome. Sometimes when I’m reviewing a game, I’ll turn the sound down to listen to a podcast or my own music. Not with this game. Each level has it’s own variation and I found myself turning my speakers up, rather than turning them down. I found the music would will me on to get one more level in before I shut down the game and helped me to feel immersed in the environment. Good soundtrack or subliminal messages? You decide.Clustertrucks first world starts fairly easy and has you jumping over trucks with minimal effort. As well as jumping on top of the trucks, you can jump on the back of them for a height boost allowing you to clear several trucks at once. Levels soon start getting hard, though, with large rocks falling down onto your pathway and stopping everything in their tracks.One level had me jumping across trucks impaled on spikes and it took me a few tries (over 50) to beat it. This is where the cool matrix like feeling comes in, and it felt amazing to chain difficult jumps together. I never felt that the way the character controls was hindering my cool moves.Like most games these days, Clustertruck has a number of abilities for you to choose from. You can have two at a time, one on your left click and another on your right click. All the abilities in this game are really fun to use, and I felt that each one changed how I played in a significant way. The jetpack was my favourite and allowed me to skip over a lot of difficult parts simply by flying way over the top of them. Some aren’t so helpful as they are fun, though.The grappling hook led me to my death more times than not on the later levels, but it was fun swinging from truck to truck on the easier ones. The slow-mo power up was also great, and just added to that matrix feel even more and it was exhilarating to watch trucks fly past me in slow motion.Clustertruck has a lot of levels, over 80 in fact. Each world’s theme varies and takes you from the barren desert to medieval villages, all the way up to hell. What struck me the most, was how the difficulty in each level fluctuated. One level I’m flying throughout the air without a care in the world, and the next, I’m slamming my fist on the table in frustration. Despite that, I feel like this is all by design.Clustertruck makes you feel like a truck jumping God and then slams you back into the ground like the amateur truck jumper you are. Not that that isn’t fun. It felt amazing to finally beat a level you were stuck on, and boy did I get stuck. The last level took me over 100+ tries to beat and could be really frustrating sometimes. I won’t spoil the final level because it’s great. I hope you have the same trouble as I did.The replayability potential here is great. Now that I’ve completed the game, I’ve gone back through each world to earn points to try out abilities that I hadn’t picked up before. Speedrunners are going to have a field day with this game and unfortunately, I didn’t have the patience to work out why some dude had managed to beat a level in 1.2 seconds when I was barely getting through to the end in 20. There’s also a level editor that will increase replayability even more and I dread to think the evil levels people are going to create, and with workshop integration, it’s going to take off in a big way.Clustertruck is an unusual game, but it’s an addictive game that I found hard to put down. There’s a lot to do here at launch and with the inclusion of a level editor, I see this game having a long life in both level creation and speed running communities. While the fluctuation in difficulty can be frustrating at times, the relief and joy of completing a hard level overcome that initial frustration. Truly a breath of fresh air in light of the busy AAA schedule.