Original and downright fun!
This sets the premise for a game with 35 levels, 156 Killer Ken action figures and somewhere around 260 Clydes! There are 24 main levels, as well as a final level. There are also 10 challenges. They’re all connected by fancy teleports. The 35 levels take place in anywhere from deserts to snow to plumbing systems or good, old nature. You have to use levers, drains that suck you in and spit you out somewhere else, ladders and moving platforms to make your way through the levels. You find clones of yourself by opening cages, using a cloning machine or simply finding them. You’ll find many situations where you need to use your clones to open doors and similar. By pressing Y you can select what clone to control, or find out where the missing Killer Kens or camera robots (that need a whooping in order to complete the level) are. In order to complete a level, you really only have to destroy the camera robots (that activate mutant killer chicken cannons) and find a teleport. If you really want to complete everything in the game, you have to evacuate the other clones through shafts, collect all the Killer Kens and finish below “par time”. By clicking in the right stick, you see how many Clydes evacuated, how many camera robots destroyed and how many Killer Kens collected in that level. It also says the total number of these, so there’s no confusion of how many you lack. The health meter is displayed at all time, but you quickly respawn nearby if you die. You have infinite lives, so there’s no real pressure. I think it would take away a lot of the fun if you had to think about your health anyway.
Clyde himself provides a lot of the humor. He wears a patient’s robe that shows off his behind whenever he climbs a ladder, waves his hands like a maniac when he’s being launched up in the air and does stuff like waving or stretching when he’s idle. He makes loads of cheesy karate sounds when he’s kicking around, shakes his head when it’s hit by something or jumps around on one feet if something lands on his toes. Any clones around will start pointing and laughing if you use the DNA machines or just about anything else that’s humiliating. The DNA machines are spread around most of the levels. By placing an item on one side of the machine, you at the other and pressing B the two combine. The camera zooms in on Clyde twitching and making faces as he’s turned into an explosive barrel, chicken, frog, sheep or monkey. Turning into these animals help you complete levels. You can fly as a chicken, swim and jump longer as a frog, climb from the ceiling as a monkey, blow **** up as an explosive barrel and run faster and jump longer as sheep. You can also ride sheep… Explosive barrels can be throwed to blow **** up, rocks can be throwed to block drains and animals or rocks can be throwed at bombs or buttons. You can also lift other Clydes, but this is rarely handy unless you’re trying to evacuate Clydes more quickly.
There’s also a multiplayer portion with both Co-Op and Versus over Xbox Live or Split-screen. In Versus, there are two teams. Each team tries to destroy the other team’s camera robots first. I tried to play over Split-screen, but it seems as it doesn’t work with only two players, or maybe you need two profiles.
Cloning Clyde’s achievements includes winning the game, becoming different animals, saving 75 Clydes and more. Only one of the achievements are outside of the Singleplayer portion, and you get it from simply starting a Versus game.
Another nice feature is the game’s cheats. None of these are game ruining, but they change how Clyde looks like. Lab Rat, Robot, Frankenstein and Devil are some skins that are unlocked by doing levels. There’s also concept art and cheats that modify Clyde’s proportions (no, not those proportions…).
Cloning Clyde is a fun arcade game worth 800 MS Points. It manages to be downright funny, the levels are unique, and you get 35 levels and a decent multiplayer portion. There’s also replay value thanks to Killer Kens, Clones that needs saving and times to be beat. The graphics are good and cartoony and the gameplay is great! The only real downer with the game is its lack of background music. It rarely comes on, and what comes on is good, but it's mostly silence. This game is up there with Geometry Wars as one of the best XBL Arcade games yet.