Review: Funky Lab Rat

Posted by Ben on May 3rd, 2011 | 1 Comment | Tags: Funky Lab Rats

Funky Lab Rat is a surprising game. While it’s dressed in a veneer of a cartoon animal collecting pills, what lies beneath is an extremely solid puzzle platformer, and one that is incredibly addictive to boot.

In Funky Lab Rat, you play a Lab Rat that, while described as Funky, isn’t especially so. Really, he’s true to the original game’s title of “Junkie Lab Rat”, as every level of the game contains a set number of pills to collect, with overall totals of pills opening up new sets of levels for your Rat to prance around in. Of course, each level set is trickier than the last, with two handy guides telling you exactly how this set of levels will break your brain, with a rating out of 3 for both mechanical skills and platforming skills. It’s a neat little idea, and gives you an impression of how the level sets are going to take shape.

Once you make it into a level, then the real fun begins. Funky Lab Rat eases you into its four time manipulation powers throughout the first few levels, and it does a marvelous job of getting you ready to mix it up a little. Now, while I say “four” powers, I really mean “two”, as two of the powers in the game amount to little more than glorified reset and skip buttons, which is slightly disappointing. The other two powers are fairly standard fare, with a rewind button and a button that pauses the world, and allows you to shift around specific objects in the world to solve puzzles. The shifting power is where the move integration comes into play, allowing you to pick up and rotate items with ease. I tried using the move to play the game, but I couldn’t stand using the Dualshock 3 as my Navigator, so I went back to using just the Dualshock 3, which still worked just as well as the Move controller.

Funky Lab Rat surprised me. I don’t mean to go into games with a preconception of how they’re going to turn out, but I honestly wasn’t expecting to find a puzzle game quite as polished as Funky Lab Rat turned out. If you want a good puzzle game, give it a look. You might be surprised with what you’ll find.

A copy of this game was provided by the publisher for review purposes. For more info on our review policy click here. This review is for the PlayStation 3 version of the game.