Guts and Glory Review

Whew, end in sight. Gotta get through those rotating saws. You alright, kiddo? Yeah? Okay. Good. Here we go. Give myself a little boost…God this bike is slow. C’mon, HOLD TIGHT BACK THERE KID, WE’RE GOING IN…must keep my head low. It’s gonna be al-SHIT bomb, swerve oh FUCK KID I’M SO SORRY, swerve again FUUUUUUCCKKK my ARM IS GONE-

This isn’t the Alton Towers ride of nightmares, oh no. Welcome to Guts and Glory! If you’ve ever played the Flash game Happy Wheels, this is instantly familiar. You have pretty much the same set of characters: Man and child on a bike; Earl the drunken redneck on a four-wheeled moped; the Yang family in a convertible; Larry in some rocket chair; Jack and Jill, with Jill being pulled along in a little trailer; Zoe on a motorbike; Pedro with two dodgy potential Mexicans on the back; and Junior on a hoverboard. Their aim is to finish the level in the fastest time possible, hopefully intact. Shame Father Christmas isn’t in for the ride though to dish presents to the innumerable corpses.

If only survival was so easy. Each level has its own assortment of strategically-placed explosives on the floor, or giant logs spinning around and around at breakneck speeds. It is the exact definition of sadistic and totally off the wall insane, which is why it hits such a mark with me. Does that make me a little psychotic? Taking screenshots as the guts of my character’s son leak onto the road after being hit by a lorry? It’s bringing a smile to my face already.

As you’d expect, the official levels provided by HakJak Productions are pretty simple to begin with, as you familiarise yourself with attempting to avoid dying. I tried playing with the keyboard, but it’s a bit too fiddly at times, so I switched to my Xbox One controller which gave me more control. Particularly when you don’t want to floor it, for fear of driving off the edge of a cliff.

For the determined, you’ll probably get through these after a couple of hours. You get some unlockables for going through them, which are just different hats. There’s a sombrero, bomb shelter style helmet and a piece of shit that looks exactly like the emoji. Naturally, I tend to choose the shit over the others, although I’m quite partial to an orange cone. Watch out world, I don’t take any prisoners.

Fortunately, once you get through these there are community created levels available, which you can contribute to yourself. You can either go into Steam Workshop, or use the in-game browser, sort by votes, and try the best rated ones. As is the case with the official levels, your time is submitted when (or if) you manage to finish the level onto a global leaderboard. Some fan favourites of Happy Wheels don’t seem to have been migrated yet, unfortunately; I was looking forward to Taken 3, where the evil pedo kidnaps your child at the beginning with a giant fork. Don’t look at me like that, this is the real world.

If you can’t already tell, Guts and Glory is just a good laugh. You probably won’t sit and play for hours on end – unless you’re a bit weird – but that’s not what it’s for. Multiplayer would make a fantastic addition, running over your mate on a bike whilst you’re on a moped? Pushing his kid off the bike onto a saw? Fantastic fun. Graphically it’s nothing to write home about, and the music soon gets repetitive, but that’s what the PC master race is all about – get Spotify or those FLAC albums on in the background.

The biggest issue I have is the asking price. I think £11.39 is pushing it. But if you were a Happy Wheels fan, and want in on the 3D conversion, just buy it. Try not to murder the Yang family too many times, I’m not sure how much more they can take.