Coconut Dodge Revitalised review for PS Vita

Coming as it does after FuturLab’s first full-fledged Vita game, Velocity Ultra, Coconut Dodge Revitalised feels like a bit of a letdown. After all, where that previous game is one of the best Sony’s handheld has to offer, this one feels more like a mobile gaming refugee, the sort of thing you might expect to find in Apple’s App Store or the Google Play store. You play as a crab, dodging falling coconuts and collecting falling treasure and…well, that’s about it. There’s no story, no changing up gameplay: you just want to last as long as you can in the hopes of besting your previous high score.

Of course, comparing Coconut Dodge Revitalised to Velocity Ultra is totally unfair on my part, and not just because most games will come out badly when compared to Velocity Ultra. No, what makes the comparison unfair is that Coconut Dodge clearly aims to occupy a very different niche. If I’m going to compare the game to anything, it should be to stuff like Jetpack Joyride, or Flying Hamster HD, or Men’s Room Mayhem — in other words, to the other mobile-style games already on the Vita.

And on that front, the game is…still not that great, to be honest. Even by the (arguably lower) standards of mobile games, Coconut Dodge Revitalised feels a little insubstantial. Play it once, and you’ve basically gotten a taste of everything the game has to offer. Yes, there are a couple of different modes available — one makes the coconuts fall in a maze pattern, another asks you to keep a bouncing ball in the air — but none of them alter the basic formula all that much.

Admittedly, that’s kind of the appeal of games like this. One of the great things about mobile gaming is how developers are able to take simple premises and then show all the different ways that premise can be varied and expanded. That doesn’t work in this case — you start with a simple premise, and that’s pretty much all you get. There is an online high score leaderboard, so if that appeals to you this game may be right up your alley, but otherwise, there’s not really very much to Coconut Dodge Revitalised.