LOVE 3 Is a Precision Platformer That Wants You To Succeed
Could LOVE 3 be your gateway drug to unforgiving, tough-as-nails platformers?
Super Meat Boy is probably one of my favourite games of the last 15 years. It’s been a hugely influential game in the indie space. One thing I would hold against it is that it led to a proliferation of hard-as-nails precision platformers that reveled in your failure. This is the environment in which Fred Wood released his first game, LOVE, in 2014 for PC.
LOVE is a precision platformer with a stripped-back, retro aesthetic. What made the game unique was the ability to place a checkpoint anywhere you like. The difficulty is there, along with some solid platforming, but the unlimited checkpoints allow long, tricky levels to be broken into achievable chunks. If you finish the game, then you can graduate to less forgiving modes.
A sequel, LOVE 2: kuso, followed in 2017, with a bigger scope, including remastered levels from the original, but the same gameplay philosophy. In 2018, Celeste was released and was immediately (and rightly) placed on the top pantheon of modern platformers. Amongst Celeste’s many achievements was its fantastic assist system. If you’re stuck on one of the many challenging screens, you can slow down the game’s speed, allow yourself extra dashes or flip on God Mode. The assists — which helped players progress through its affecting story — helped Celeste reach a wider audience.
I noticed indie games taking cues from Celeste in terms of difficulty and assist options since its release. As for Fred Wood and his LOVE series, they were already on board with this friendlier approach to platforming and primed for another sequel.
LOVE 3, which was released last year on PC and Switch, is again another step up from its predecessor. The levels are bigger and contain more secrets, and a customisable slowdown ability has joined the checkpoint spawning mechanic. This feature, likely inspired by Celeste, really helps to elevate this latest entry in the series to become the platforming skills trainer it has promised to be.
The reason LOVE 3 works well as training wheels for precision platformers is that it nails the fundamentals. The jumping feels sufficiently tight and responsive. The levels smartly focus on a couple of features per level. You’ll find yourself introduced to switches and bouncing platforms on one level, then get a crash course in key locating and turret avoidance on the next. It’s not reinventing the wheel, but it’s a very nice wheel and a good wheel for those new to using wheels.
I think I’ll stop referring to LOVE 3 as a wheel now.
LOVE 3 is a decent package for platforming fans, new and old. There are 25 levels on top of the 41 levels from LOVE 1 and LOVE 2 (more if you include the remastered version of LOVE 1), and four modes of play: unlimited mode (with unlimited lives), arcade mode (with a limited but generous amount of lives to complete your run), YOLO mode (you only live once, if you’ve scrubbed this acronym from your brain) and a time attack mode. Your first run-through of LOVE 3’s levels will take 1–1.5 hours, with another 1.5 hours for the prequels. These levels, with their fast-flowing nature, are highly replayable with its increasingly fast times.
Could LOVE 3 be your gateway drug to unforgiving, tough-as-nails platformers? Maybe. Just don’t blame me, or Fred Wood, if you find yourself in a gutter, trying to speedrun Super Meat Boy.
