Funk OF Titans, developed by indie dev. ‘A Crowd Of Monsters’ has made its way to PC. Initially presented at Gamescom 2014 for Xbox One this game marked the developers first foray into console territory. Since an early 2015 release it has made its way onto Wii U and Android, the latter of which this reviewer feels it should have stayed on. Retailing at £4.99 on Steam, Funk Of Titans is an endless runner bizarrely centred around an Ancient Greek theme. You play as Perseus son of Zeus (who bears a striking resemblance to Samuel L Jackson) and you are tasked with eradicating the world of all music that is not of the Funk genre. Each world map is focused around  a different genre of music, though this highlights my major issue with the game, it presents this in a very lazy way.

Not sure what any of this has to do with Ancient Pop…

The first area is pop although the levels literally have nothing to do with pop music, the enemies are still Ancient Greece themed zombies and though the levels are colourful and interesting to look at they seem to have no correlation to the musical theme the game tries to represent. The only indication that this game does in fact have a musical theme are the amusing world end bosses. The boss for the first world is a Lady Gaga esque character with weaponised breasts, and while this is initially funny the amusement wears off when you realise that the boss challenge is a very easy rhythm game that merely involves pressing up down left or right at the right time.

Wish there was more rhythm to this rhythm game.

During the regular levels the game only uses two controls, jump and kick. As you can imagine the short levels are spent jumping over obstacles and kicking enemies and this is fine, the game has no major difficulty but can be enjoyed especially as the colourful backgrounds are very nice to look at, the sunset levels that clearly take inspiration from the Donkey Kong Country games look very pretty. Unfortunately the game’s challenge morphs into frustration when it becomes clear that things aren’t going to change much during the games play through. There are only three types of enemy that I counted and so jumping and kicking them out the way becomes very dull very soon. In the three hours it took me to complete Funk Of Titans I was constantly waiting for something new to be introduced to mix things up a bit but this didn’t really happen. As you progress through the levels you collect Golden Records that you can use to purchase items and skins for your character, running through ancient Greece with a Stormtrooper Helmet and Lightsaber is as fun as it sounds, but apart from certain items unlocking other areas there’s little point to spending the Records you acquire.

Gorgeous visuals distract from the repetitive gameplay.

You would be forgiven for assuming that this game would have a strong emphasis on the soundtrack and it would have been great to have to genuinely good Funk music to accompany this game. Instead we are given only a handful of tunes that only change when you visit a new world map. This means every level within a single world has the same song and none of them are memorable or even funky. I still remember the music from endless runner Bit Trip Presents…  Runner 2 and I haven’t played that game in years, I played Funk Of Titans yesterday and can barely remember the music at all.

I Really wanted to like Funk Of Titans, I think the concept is funny, I love the bright art style and it’s always nice when a game doesn’t take itself too seriously, though Funk Of Titans doesn’t seem to comprehend its own concept. Funk is an incredible and memorable musical genre with so much to draw from for inspiration, this game however does not do the genre justice.

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