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There's gold in them there clichés - at least for a game-maker with a talent for subversion and quirky embellishment. This belief has underpinned San Franciscan developer Gaijin Games' past titles, all of which have employed the prefix 'Bit.Trip' and all of which have adopted the fat pixel aesthetic of late 1970s Atari games. Partly responsible for the renaissance in vintage art styling in the independent game scene, Bit.Trip took pixels once viewed as crude and outmoded and made them stylish again, along with the sine-wail soundtracks that gave way to Hollywood orchestras in the 1990s (now an artistic choice rather than a technological constraint).But Gaijin's talent isn't only for trendsetting. The developer's more laudable quality is in taking the medium's first principles (as laid down by Pong, Pac-Man and others) and spinning them into fresh, vivid shapes. Time and again the company has found gold in these clichés. That keen interest in tired or outmoded game styles continues with Runner2: Future Legend of Rhythm Alien, a game that slots into the so-called auto-runner genre, which is now - quite understandably - a bit weary. As in Canabalt, Jetpack Joyride et al, your character automatically runs from the left of the screen to the right, and you must dodge various obstacles in order to progress as far as possible.
Future Legend of Rhythm Alien tweaks the formula in some consequence-rich ways. For one, each level has a start, a middle and an end and, if you crash into a ledge or fail to leap clear over the head of a spike-helmed Goomba, you are simply returned to the start of the stage to seamlessly try again: there is no death in this game. Protagonist CommanderVideo's red sneakers never wear out and no matter how many times you throw him from a ledge into oblivion he'll make another attempt without complaint or penalty, and with all the tenacity of one of Trials' bike-riders.
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