Introduction
Ninja Bee has produced another batch of sweet honey for gamers to enjoy with their latest Xbox Live Arcade offering, Cloning Clyde. This instant classic is a side scrolling puzzle platforming game that will have you working off Clyde's extra pounds. Fun, inventive, strange, and hilarious, are just a few words to describe what is brewing in the honey pot. Here is our review of Cloning Clyde for the Xbox Live Arcade.

The Game
Cloning Clyde is a simple, yet engaging Xbox Live Arcade game that will mostly likely put a smile on your face. It is real easy to loose track of time when your running around as this Clyde dude, like they say "time flies when you're having fun". Cloning Clyde is a refreshing change for the Xbox Live Arcade which is being filled with a bunch of simple ports of old classics arcade standards. Nothing against the classics, they are classic after all, but its nice to have some new blood on the Xbox Live network. If you have to describe Clyde the first game that would come to my mind would be Lemmings, although Clyde is a little more evolving and interesting then the Lemming crew.

Chicken or the Clyde?
The overall production of Cloning Clyde has a good sense of humor and there are several moments when you'll be laughing out loud. There isn't any dialog voice work in the game, but Clyde 's look just about says it all. Plus Clyde can mutate via the cloning station into unique hybrid characters like a chicken, ape, frog, sheep and that is funny on its own. Not only do these mutations add more then a comedic touch, they are important to the game and each character can uniquely help Clyde overcome the numerous obstacles. For example the chicken Clyde hybrid can fly, the frog can swim, and ape can climb, pretty straightforward in its concept, but its how you use them which are inventive. Mutating is important to most levels, but it's not a necessary trick that Cloning Clyde relies on. The levels are usually multi tiered and will make you do a bunch of mini objectives before you can progress.

The Great Escape
The object of Cloning Clyde is the obvious, escape the level, but there are other challenges that can be accomplished for the bigger score. Besides finishing the level is the task of freeing you clones. The way you do this is by opening a grate of a tube, and the Clyde clones will happily climb in to freedom. The tricky part about this is opening the grates and that usually happens at the end of a level. Like any standard platforming game the hero will be climbing, swimming, jumping his way around the map, unlocking doors and breaking down walls just to get to freedom and save his cloned selves.

Another bonus part of Cloning Clyde is to collecting all the little Killer Kenn figures that are hidden around each map. You can finish a level without snatching all of them, but if found they boost to your score and unlock Xbox 360 achievements. Lastly you're on the clock, finish under part time and you get a huge bonus, otherwise taking you're time only effects your score. I'm glad they did slap a timer on the whole game because that would have made the level unnecessarily difficult.

Like Achievements?
If achievements are your thing you won't have to extract that much effort to nab all of Cloning Clyde's 12 achievements. Ninja Bee has systematically made some achievements very easy to unlock like when you mutate into a Something-Clyde, and then the rest a little more challenging. Interestingly the points are spaced apart in weird divisions like 8, 10, 12, 14, and 15 and up. It's not the basic increments of five. Becoming a Sheep-Clyde will earn you 8 points, where as the Mutant-Clyde hits up 16. The other achievements are easy notched like collect Kenn figures, or free 75 clones. For a challenge the hardest achievement would have to be Duplicone Dash. For this achievement you need to clear levels 1 to 24 under the par time. Not so easy, but it is obtainable. It only marks up to 18 points, so if you don't get that one you won't be missing out too much.

Perdy Graphics
One aspect of Clyde that grabbed my eye immediately is the quality of the graphics. Pulling a page from the pages of Mother Goose and Grimm is the thick cartoon style of Cloning Clyde. This game looks great and even translates well on our 57" Toshiba. The levels are nicely themed and have some nice aesthetics that go from snow covered levels to swamps. Clyde is also well animated, along with the other characters, or mutated Clyde. The style is unique and fresh for Xbox Live, and I got to add, the extra character skins that can be unlocked in the 'Cheat Menu' are classic, funny and fun. For the sound in Cloning Clyde, we have the same high quaility contribited by Charles Dail Nielson. The use of sound is limited in its use but when used, it is done right.

Go Online!
Another surprise to Cloning Clyde is multiplayer support. Clyde can handle 2 players in co-operative play, or up to 4 players in a versus mode. In the versus you have to defend your own security machine from the other players, and the winner is the one to destroy all the other plays machines. It's a neat concept that differs from the normal gameplay and is really fun to cause havoc over the six available multiplayer arenas.

LOWDOWN
Cloning Clyde will no doubt be another hit on Xbox Live Arcade for Ninja Bee following up the strategic space adventure Outpost Kaloki X. Cloning Clyde has personality, the levels are fun, and you even have multiplayer support. Everything is in check and Cloning Clyde is definitely worth the price on the marketplace.

Final Score: 9 / 10