The Scoreboard #14

Schizoid

Ironically, “The Most Co-op Game Ever” insists that you play alone for most of the Achievements. This mind-bending colorful confusion is, on top of being solo-centric, freaking impossible to earn in. With criteria that some might qualify as “Absolutely Bananas”, it’s hard to imagine earning more than a few Achievements without really diving deep in to Schizoid.

Best Achievement: Flitt Breeder (10 pts.) Get a gold medal on level 5 ("My Man Flitt") without destroying any Flitts. – Going the whole stage without killing any baddies is frightening. The blue and orange baddies are already head hunting their respective polar opposite, but when they transform in to Flitts, they become lethal to both of you, as they can’t be killed. Chilling out ‘til the end – allowing all the enemies, since you didn’t kill them, to become Flitts – will result in a victory Achievement that’s both satisfying and intensely fun.

Worst Achievement: Corpus Callosum Severed (20 pts.) Complete level 119 ("Ragnarok") in Uberschizoid mode – Uberschizoid mode is simultaneously the coolest and worst game-mode ever created. Controlling one color with the left stick, and the other with the right, has an absolutely crushing effect on your brain. Trying not to look like a five year old playing my-first-videogame is impossible, since comprehending the corresponding colors locations and objectives will floor you. Making it to level 119 is a completely unrealistic goal for our seemingly stupid selves, so we hate it for that alone, never mind the time investment required to solve it.

Easiest Achievement: Sploderific (10 pts.) Destroy all enemies on level 12 ("Smartbomb") with a single smartbomb. – This was one of the very few Achievements we actually managed to unlock. Level 12 involves exactly the following: holding up. That’s it! You move up, detonate the bomb near the central cage where all the nasties are locked up, and it’s Achievement Unlocked, you nasty scorpio-genocider, you.

Hardest Achievement: Corpus Callosum Severed (20 pts.) Complete level 119 ("Ragnarok") in Uberschizoid mode. – There is nothing that needs to be said here. This is outlandish, and our brains are melting at the thought of Uberschizoid and a triple-digit number.

Time Investment vs. Payoff: 4 (out of ten) – It’s an excellent game if you’re looking for fun, but, uh, we’re not. We want points, and we want ‘em now, so trudging along the 100+ levels in various game modes – each one requiring you to start from the beginning, since unlocking level one, five or one hundred in multiplayer doesn’t unlock it in any other mode – is going to take forever, never mind the absolute brain power required to wrap your head around the Uberschizoid mode.

Overall: 4 (out of ten) – As a game, we dug Schizoid, but since we aren’t here for the slick lookin’ neon graphics, or the bite-sized levels of multiplayer madness, it failed to deliver. The Achievements are uninspired, generic, and otherwise unrealistic. The necessity to replay levels and game variations for points is infuriating, so we’re going to recommend against Schizoid if you’re only in it for the Gamerscore.

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