They're like hearts, but more x-treme

HeartZ: Co-Hope Puzzles is a lot like Trine (or, maybe even more like The Lost Vikings). There are three characters, each with distinct abilities that allow them to - using teamwork - solve puzzles and traverse levels. But HeartZ makes some simple mistakes that leave it firmly behind its progenitors.

For one thing, the story and theme are threadbare. There's a brief scene in the beginning which seems to explain that some cybernetic creatures got their hearts combined by mad science -- but the characters have no personality, and there's no sense of continuous storytelling as the game goes on. You're just a bunch of weird robot-things in a laboratory.

I also feel like HeartZ takes too long to introduce each character's special moves. For the first set of levels, none of the characters felt different from one another.

But the most heinous of HeartZ's transgressions is its death model: if any one of the characters dies, all three of them are sent back to the last checkpoint. And I mean, as a co-op platformer, you should expect a fair amount of accidental death -- resulting in all players being punished every time any one of them fails.

HeartZ isn't exactly bad, but there doesn't seem like any reason to play it when other games do the same idea so much better.

Progress: Finished Act 2