Goatmoose

Stacking is an adorable little game that puts you in control of Charlie Blackmore, the world’s smallest Russian stacking (matryoshka) doll, in a quest to save your family. They have been kidnapped and forced into child labor under the rule of an evil Baron. With your stacking abilities, you stack into dozens of other characters around the world, using their special abilities and talents to overthrow the Baron and free not only your family, but all others suffering under his treachery.

From a creative standpoint, It’s absolutely silly and super original. The game is a joy to play, narrated using silent movie-esque cut scenes with humorous dialogue and entertaining characters. The story is a straightforward rescue mission, pitting you in five locations with tons of unique and funny dolls to stack into and solve problems. Each area has a number of problems you need to solve, each with multiple methods for solving. It’s all good fun and not like any game you’ve ever played before. Its balance of aesthetics, originality, humor and seriousness are fused with a great control system, innovative play and grand visuals for an overall well-developed title.

The achievements for Stacking are all offline and are congruent with completing everything there is to complete in each area. Going after them all will also guarantee you do everything there is to do in the game. This would entail finishing each section’s story, stacking into each unique doll in every area, finding all the solutions to each problem in each area, and completing various hi-jinks that are unique to each level. The hi-jinks range from using certain dolls’ special abilities (farting, hammering a gavel, etc.) on other dolls, to influencing the environment in various ways. Each of these things adds a layer of depth to the story and keeps you playing a little longer in each level. The hardest of the bunch may be finding each unique doll in which to stack yourself, as there is little help in this regard when it comes to knowing who you’re missing, forcing you to stack with any doll that looks unique and interact with everyone on the level.

The downside is this game is painfully short-lived and easy. Doing everything above took me five hours from the time I turned the game on to the time every single thing was completed and I had a 200/200 gamerscore. This is because the story challenges are very simple, and if you aren’t sure how to obtain each solution, there are in-game hints that tell you exactly what to do. Finding the unique dolls and doing the hi-jinks, while the most time consuming element of the game, wasn’t that much of a problem as you generally unlock most of them by “accident” just playing through to solve the level challenges. There’s usually only a handful left to do by the time you’ve completed each section’s story, so it’s merely a wrap-up at the end of each part.

None of that would be that big of a deal if the game didn’t come with a 1200MS point ($15) price tag. That puts it in the top tier for XBLA titles and for something that only takes 5 hours to complete and has absolutely no replay value once done, you’re paying about $3/hr for the game. That’s pretty pricey. It’s a great way to get an extra 200 points into your gamerscore and add another completed game to your list, but those points come at a large cost. The experience of the game is certainly fun, but the price shouldn’t be more than 800MS points at most.