CID The Dummy Demo

In the world of video games, nothing is too weird or unreal, especially not when it comes to simple games that emphasize on fun and entertainment. Hence, platformers and beat-em up titles are always rather wacky, with plenty of bizarre characters, surreal monsters and unique level design, not to mention the stories behind them.

CID The Dummy is an action-platformer in which you have to solve puzzles, perform some acrobatics and defeat a few enemies along the way. Because the main character is a modified crash test dummy, it also comes with a few more unusual powers, which help it overcome a variety of obstacles and successfully defeat a number of bosses at the end of each level.

As far as the background story is concerned, it all revolves around CID's creator, an old man who wants to rescue his daughter from peril and builds his own killing machine in order to do so. Naturally, he's always in contact with CID and you get a lot of valuable advice from the professor, although these are mostly given to as custcenes, which sometimes breaks up the gameplay in quite the annoying way.

It should be noted that not a lot of effort went into level design, nor the missions that you have to complete over the course of the game. Hence, the stages are very small and the main objectives revolve around pushing a certain button somewhere in the room, which isn't that difficult most of the time. The other half of the game is spent fighting mindless mobs and taking part in repetitive boss battles.

As far as the graphics are concerned, the game utilizes a blend of 2D and 3D, since the characters and the environments are in three dimensions, but the perspective forces a 2D viewpoint. Obviously, this can make things a bit complicated, since you are never quite sure how far or close you are from certain objects and you often miscalculate the jumps.

Other than the somewhat original, yet very boring main character, CID The Dummy lacks any kind of entertainment value, due to the very small and dull levels. The plot is barely present and it certainly does not impress when it comes to depth or narrative.