LIFTED Review - Lara Croft and Rayman Walk into a Bar…

Barely Magic Mike
Jul 21
5 min read

https://youtu.be/Ht2BBCLIPlI?si=atWdb9eyxTnNdrce

Lifted is a game whose intentions are pure—to take the normally quite morose cinematic platformer genre popularized by Inside, Limbo, Planet of Lana, and others, and give it a colorful, family-friendly setting with a Pixar-esque vibe. Not a wholly original concept by any means, especially with Konami’s Darwin’s Paradox having come out just a few months ago, but it's the kind of game that would be nice to see more of. So does Lifted warrant a recommendation? Well, you probably clicked this video to find out, so unlike your latest Temu order, I won't leave you disappointed.

Lifted gives you control of Ari, whose quest for extra credit in physics makes him the unwitting accomplice of his professor as he searches for treasure with the help of his time-traveling elevator. That's a lot for one sentence and the sort of premise that, on the surface, seems a couple of shades too close to a certain other popular dynamic duo known for their sci-fi hijinks. I forget the name—Lick and Snorty? Sure, that sounds about right.

In reality, Lifted’s story feels like Rick and Morty if it were adapted for the Disney Channel, sanding down every rough and naughty edge to a kid-friendly shine. Sadly, that goes for the humor too - while there is a certain charm to Ari and Professor Raventhorpe’s adventure, its writing relies too heavily on tropey lines like “Here goes nothin’!” and “Missed me, missed me, now you gotta kiss me!” But to say it lacks humor might be unfair to its intended audience because, frankly, the more I played Lifted, the more it felt firmly and almost exclusively aimed at kids. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but something to keep in mind for cinematic platformer fans looking for their next fix, since its innocent, whimsical nature permeates every single part of the experience.

I'll back up a little though - at its core, Lifted is a puzzle platformer that makes its mark on the genre by making its gameplay feel almost as cinematic as its cutscenes. By and large, it succeeds at this. You'll traverse a small variety of environments that allow you to jump, grapple, swing, climb, and solve puzzles as Ari moves along a 2D path in a 3D world. It's not the first game to mix dimensions, obviously, but the way it does so feels unique. Rather than the world being built on a straight line from left to right that Ari traverses, it feels like the world is fully 3D and that you're on a winding, twisting 2D path through it. That difference might seem like splitting hairs, but in practice, it adds immersion and gives the game a unique style.

The platforming is also solid enough, often making the game feel almost like a Lego Uncharted, minus the brick people. The problem comes down to how little more there is to say than that - unfortunately, Lifted’s level design is not only uninspired, feeling like an extremely basic remix of almost any other 2D platformer I've ever played, but unless your age is still in the single digits, most of it is about as challenging as heating up a microwave dinner. I kept waiting for its design to evolve beyond the same few basic obstacles and ideas. And while it occasionally threw a mild twist in with a clever puzzle or two, the whole affair is so short that it's over before it truly gets started. From the moment I booted up Lifted to the moment I watched the credits roll, it lasted barely two and a half hours - a runtime I suspect many will take issue with, and justifiably so. It turns what could have been a charming, globe-trotting, time-traveling journey into… Well, that, I suppose, but so limited in scope that it feels like a wedding reception whose dinner was replaced by a handful of hors d’oeuvres and the open bar was closed to make sure nobody under 21 felt excluded. Would you go to that wedding? Right, neither would I.

I have to throw out an exception to what I just said about Lifted's difficulty though, because the game's more bombastic set pieces, while fun on paper, have some questionable design leading to nightmarish difficulty spikes that are sure to leave kids confused. Running out of a crumbling temple or away from spear-wielding tribesmen can be a great time if calibrated well. But as it stands, these sequences contain a handful of brutal moments requiring the sort of pixel-perfect precision that ruins the fun immediately. I hope there are some patches planned for these sequences, because suddenly failing 20 times in a row in a game this easy-breezy is about as fun as finding something crunchy in your scrambled eggs. And that's only the difficulty spikes - never mind some of the bugs, one of which required me to jump on a platform that had turned completely invisible. Some polish is definitely needed here.

Strange difficulty spikes come out of nowhere!

Thankfully, Lifted's presentation is up to the task of carrying it through some of its lesser sequences. While its short runtime naturally limits the number of unique environments you'll visit, the visual style is bright and colorful, often cleverly weaving Ari's path through interesting environments that feel immersive and alive. All characters have a Rayman-esque look where their limbs float disconnected from their bodies, but it works well for the cartoony vibe they're going for here.

While I can't say the game's music ever goes beyond the generic, the voice acting is consistently good and brings Ari and Dr. Raventhorpe to life with enough enthusiasm to bring the charm. I genuinely feel that between this and the (usually) gentle difficulty, there's a lot here that younger kids might really enjoy as an early foray into the gaming world. It's just a shame that it's so simple and brief.

Frankly, this has turned out to be one of my shortest reviews for exactly that reason. Lifted's heart is in the right place, and it brings enough enthusiasm and charm with it to almost succeed as a casual cinematic platformer. But it's a shame to report that while its various pieces are all crafted with care, none of them manage to dig it out of the hole it creates by being so short and forgettable. From simplistic level design to a cliché-riddled script to random difficulty spikes, virtually every element of Lifted is simply… fine, if that. I can't say I didn't enjoy chunks of it for what they were, but it's hard to broadly recommend it in light of its faults. If you have a young one at home who's just getting into video games and you don't mind a short and silly romp where you might have to help them through a few spots, Lifted might be just the ticket. For everyone else, you may want to wait for a deep sale and some patches. Lifted gets the table lamp.