HIGH Surfing a missile into a building is rad as hell.

LOW There’s a suboptimal amount of downtime in the stage design.

WTF Joe’s eloquent way with words.

Are videogame bad guys deliberately stupid? It’s a question I’m sure nobody on the planet has ever asked before, but the bad guy in Shinobi: Art of Vengeance, Lord Ruse, comes across as a prime example of being a blithering dum-dum.

First, he’s a bad guy gunning for domination in a world where Sega’s premiere bad guy-killing ninja Joe Musashi exists. He then intentionally attacks Joe’s home while he’s chilling with his wife, dog and students, confidently relegating the killing of said super ninja to his most inept followers and leaving before the job’s done — so now Joe has to prioritize killing the bastard in a personal way.

Players will rely on Joe’s trusty katana during this 2D side scrolling quest, as well as a pocket full of throwing knives and an understated ability to dive-kick dudes in the face. Over time he’ll acquire new moves and additional gear, but don’t expect new weapon types. Blowing fire and summoning snake gods are all well and good, but Joe’s ultimately a katana guy through and through.

In his pursuit of vengeance, Joe will discover amulets that improve or modify certain abilities. He can equip some that cause enemies to drop more money or better healing items, while others offer rechargeable barriers that absorb a single attack or give significant damage buffs as his combo meter rises.

Naturally there are a ton of bad guys to meet and defeat along the way, from low level ninja to far more competent ‘elite’ demons, robots and skilled swordsmen.

Most enemies have two damage gauges to keep track of — their basic health and a stun meter that opens them up for an instant execution marker which will see Joe bullet across the screen turning every vulnerable enemy a into bloody mist. It should be mentioned that doing these instakills never, ever gets old and is heavily encouraged by showering players who use it with more resources than normal kills.

To get specific for a moment, there’s an excessive amount of hitstop on attacks, causing the action to briefly freeze as blade meets flesh. Most titles usually reserve this for heavy or perfectly-timed hits, but Shinobi: Art of Vengeance liberally applies it to pretty much everything. It’s a double-edged approach, with many combos feeling weighty and powerful in nature, but this staccato rhythm of sword swipes staggers the flow of combat and lingers just a little too long when the player takes damage from enemies.

With that said, for the most part the action feels solidly enjoyable with plenty of scope for player expression and experimenting with flamboyant combos that brutalize enemies halfway across the screen, their broken corpses flopping around like pincushions full of kunai. However, I’m also curious to see how the same combat engine would fare if the hitstop was completely absent.

Something that’s more of a clear issue is that Joe commits to certain attacks, meaning that he can’t roll or jump to safety until the attack completed. It leads to the master ninja feeling less sprightly than he probably should, tanking hits with his face instead of swiftly sweeping out of range, making performing certain moves more unsafe than they probably should be. Not that enemies are particularly deadly for the most part, many of them putter through their standard attack animations without much regard for what Joe’s up to.

Bosses are the usual motley crew of idiots who think that they can take on Joe Musashi and live, though series veterans will recognize a few returning faces. They’re fine, but rarely standout – most of them are punching bags, honestly. That’s not to say that they don’t have attack patterns that require avoiding, but Joe can absolutely body them for the most part.

In terms of presentation, Shinobi looks great — absolutely fantastic in places, even, with a hand-drawn art style that continually impresses from the first scene in a gorgeously sunlit field, all the way to later stages storming through rain-slick cities, towering mountain passes, underground secret bases and the welcome return of an awesome surfboarding section. That said, I do find the overly angular stage design to detract from things somewhat, though I’m sure the choice was made to make surface areas more easily recognizable.

Shinobi: Art of Vengeance takes a psuedo-metroidvania approach to level design. It isn’t all one large interconnected world to explore, but rather a bunch of levels peppered with secrets that can only be fully explored when bringing back tools and skills acquired in later levels — things like walls requiring climbing claws to scale, updrafts that necessitate the use of a glider, or anchor points that Musashi will need a grappling hook to latch onto.

Despite this, Shinobi: Art of Vengeance doesn’t take full advantage of the approach. Players will often return with new gear only to pick up a single item or perform a short platforming sequence instead of uncovering new areas to explore, enemies to kill and bosses to defeat. It’s largely disappointing when compared to other games that utilize the approach well, though there are portals known as Ankou rifts that offer more challenging subrooms filled with enemies or tougher platforming sections.

The puzzles on offer generally exist to slow the proceedings down. Flipping switches to open doors is rarely an exhilarating gameplay mechanic, and pushing heavy objects across a floor to block a laser or power a device doesn’t exactly scream high-speed ninja action. Little of this is significantly additive, instead leading to far more downtime than is desired.

I generally enjoyed Shinobi: Art of Vengeance just fine. On the upside, the combat engine is fluid and satisfying to experiment with, and for the most part Shinobi: Art of Vengeance generally offers a reasonably good time. However, as a longtime series fan I expected an absolutely awesome outing, and it never quite hit the heights I was hoping for.

Rating: 6.5 out of 10

Disclosures: This game is developed by Lizardcube and published by DotEmu. It is currently available on XBX/S/PS5/Switch and PC. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the XBX. Approximately 20 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode, and the game was completed. There are no multiplayer modes.

Parents: According to the ESRB, this game is rated T and contains Blood and Violence. The good stuff! The official description reads: This is an action-platformer in which players assume the role of a ninja leader trying to save the world from an evil corporation. From a 2D/sideways perspective, players explore levels while fighting various enemies (e.g., ninjas, soldiers, monsters). Players use swords, throwing stars, and dramatic special moves to kill enemies in frenetic combat; fighting is highlighted by cries of pain, brief slow-motion effects, and frequent blood splatter. One boss fight allows players to dive inside the creature and slash at a giant heart.

Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes available.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: This game offers subtitles. The subtitles cannot be altered and/or resized. I don’t recall any instances where lack of sound would be a problem. I’d say it’s fully accessible without audio.

Remappable Controls: Yes, this game offers fully remappable controls.

The post Shinobi: Art Of Vengeance Review appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

HIGH It’s Tail Time.

LOW It’s Tail Time.

WTF It’s Tail Time.

When I asked to review the remastered Gex Trilogy, I knew it would be a massive undertaking, the likes of which no one has seen before — and it is not possible to overstate how sarcastic I am being here.

Debuting back in 1994, Gex is a ‘beloved’ character mascot that the big bosses at Crystal Dynamics and Square Enix wheeled out for four years despite owning the IP for nearly two decades overall, and neither studio doing much of anything with it in all that time. 

After playing through this trilogy, it’s not surprising why.

Gex is not a compelling character, and the titles where he is featured are equally uninteresting. It’s clear that he was meant to compete with the plethora of 3D platforming mascots that came out in the late ’90s, such as Spyro the Dragon and Crash Bandicoot. However, comparing Gex to the brighter stars of the time is like pitting a toddler against a bulldozer. 

Gex’s whole personality is that he’s an anthropomorphic gecko obsessed with television. It’s a shoddy connection at best, but his whole mission across the three games is that he must tackle various villains in the Media Dimension, where he gets sucked into a TV and plays through levels based on TV show tropes and genres.

This is also, for better or worse, where he gets his humor. Gex is not the typical naive protagonist, working to save his home world from an evil threat. Instead, he behaves like a friend of a friend that you don’t really hang out with.

He’s jaded. He makes half-jokes that never land about movie stars that are no longer on the silver screen. Perhaps the most annoying part of the entire character is that every other sentence is either “It’s Tail Time” or “That’s what I call getting some tail.” The tail ‘jokes’, if one could even call them that, never stopped. It was agonizing. Maybe it was funny at one point, but I don’t think that point exists in the present day.

For this review, I played through portions of the original Gex (1995) and Gex 3: Deep Cover Gecko (1999), and played through all of Gex: Enter the Gecko (1998).

The 1995 title is a fairly standard 2D platformer. The action, as is the level design and visuals. However, it’s difficult to focus on those when Gex’s story is devoid of purpose — his mission lacks a driving force to keep him going other than the fact that he’s just stuck in the Media Dimension.

It’s common with all the Gex games, but the main villain of all three titles, Rez, shows up at the beginning of each adventure, only to disappear until the very end. Therefore, none of the enemies seem connected with the overall plot, and are just there to be dealt with. There are TV remotes to collect in each level, but it never felt like I was progressing to an ending of any kind. 

The 3D platformers weren’t much better. Enter the Gecko (1998) was the title I spent the most time with, and it felt devoid of any life or spirit.

The same can be said for Gex 3: Deep Cover Gecko (1999). A part of the reason for this was the overall TV-theming — when a title like Gex chooses to use TV as the through-line between every world and also chooses to license no recognizable properties, it feels generic. I played through a bland, yet borderline racist ninja level. I played through a generic Jurassic Park-esque dinosaur level. Even the “Circuit” levels, which seemed like something straight out of Tron, were just not memorable. 

Story and bad character design aside, the 3D games are serviceable in terms of mechanics. The 3D platforming is solid, and the setpieces are interesting enough. Frankly, it’s remarkable that the Limited Run team could bring these games back from the ’90s and make them playable today in the 2020s. 

At the end of the day, I think the main lesson to take away from the Gex Trilogy is that just because a title has a serviceable design foundation and decent gameplay mechanics, it doesn’t mean that’s enough. If the experience relies on a mascot character to stand out from the pack and that character is annoying as all hell, it’s doomed from the start.

Out of all of the nearly-forgotten games to bring forward into the 2020s, I’m not sure why Limited Run chose Gex — it’s such an absurdist concept that I have to laugh at it now, but while playing Gex in the moment, I despised it. 

Rating: 3 out of 10

Disclosures: This game is developed by Crystal Dynamics and published by Limited Run Games. It is currently available on PC. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and was reviewed on PC. Approximately 11 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode, and the game was not completed. There are no multiplayer modes.

Parents: This game is rated T by the ESRB for Blood, Crude Humor, Fantasy Violence, Mild Language and Sexual Themes. Gex will make crude, sometimes sexual jokes like “Don’t drink the punch at Jerry Garcia’s,” and “I’m lost in Dick Dale’s colon.” The extent of the crude language is a statement like “Damn this pesky gravity to hell!” when Gex falls into a pit. The combat is fairly cartoony but there are a few sections with animated blood such as in the ninja levels.

Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes available.

Dear & Hard of Hearing Gamers: There are no subtitles for dialogue. This game is not accessible.

Remappable Controls: The game’s controls are fully remappable.

The post Gex Trilogy Review appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

HIGH Clever level design. Throwback one-bit style. Unsettling sci-fi and horror elements.

LOW Missed opportunities for world-building, wonky controls, tedious trial and error gameplay.

WTF No mouse controls whatsoever?

At first glance, REPOSE could be mistaken for an untouched classic CRPG, as it’s rendered in starkly monochromatic one-bit graphics with a square aspect ratio. Upon further observation, there’s a lot more going on than one would find in a stock dungeon crawler from the ’80s.

This title offers a creepy, Giger-esque art style, leagues of claustrophobic, labyrinthine corridors, gameplay that demands careful management of one’s stamina and an oppressive atmosphere established by the crestfallen NPCs, all of whom work for a sinister, mysterious corporate entity — “The Company.”

The player’s job is grim but simple — Gather oxygen tanks from dead employees whose corpses can be found collapsed on the floor, sitting mutilated in office chairs or hanging from cables throughout the Company’s space station.

The tutorial turns out to be a dream from which the player wakes, only to find themselves sitting in a booth at a cafe an NPC named Cynthia. She informs the player that she also works for the Company, and it’s clear from her dialogue that the Company is some sort of spacefaring mega corporation with a penchant for placing profit over people, much like Weyland-Yutani in the Alien universe.

The original Alien’s iconic tagline, “in space, no one can hear you scream,” could just as easily be applied to REPOSE as the player sets forth from the bustling cafe and descends into the desolate lower levels where they will find a host of humanoid monstrosities — all the more horrifying for their indeterminate features with cables writhing around like tentacles.

With such threats lurking around every corner waiting to one-shot the player, they must be careful to take their journey one step at a time — literally.

Like the classic OG dungeon crawlers REPOSE was inspired by, the player assumes a first-person perspective and moves by taking one step after another (rather than fluid movement) which might feel archaic to players who unfamiliar with the genre, or nostalgic to those who grew up playing such games.

In an interview with DreadXP, Hungarian developer Bozó Attila Bertold explained how REPOSE started out as a sword and sorcery game in the same vein as the genre-defining dungeon crawler, Wizardry, but gradually, it felt more natural to change tack and make it sci-fi/horror-themed which is also reflected in his art.

However it’s not just an homage piece, as some mechanics work differently than one might expect. For instance, while the combat is as simple as can be, stamina does not exist in the traditional sense.

Rather than losing and recovering stamina as one does in many modern games, the player has a specified number of steps they can take (pivoting to look in a different direction does not count) before they hear a radio-like screech and they collapse.

It’s crucial to mind this mechanic, as it forces the player to carefully plan their route ahead of time based on what they learned from their last venture. One might say that REPOSE‘s greatest challenge is making the most out of every move.

One way that players can recover stamina is by drinking flasks of tea which can sometimes be found between areas, but these do not allow the player to save. It’s only once the player manages to make it to the next bed (they serve as checkpoints) that they can replenish their stamina and save their progress. 

The beds are often spread out between 40 and 50 paces away from each other so as to offer a variety of ways that the player can go about reaching the next bed, but sometimes, the player has far less steps to work with and must think carefully to figure out what the most efficient route is.

Often, the route to the next bed is blocked by obstacles or doors that must be opened elsewhere, and sometimes, opening the right door can create a shortcut back to a bed from earlier in the campaign, allowing the player to have more steps to work with.

Inevitably, the player will die many times before they find the way forward, so they must be careful not to lose their save codes as REPOSE will not autosave or autoload — saving is done the old-fashioned way by physically writing down a code somewhere, or by taking a screenshot.

This could be infuriating for some, but it does add to the sense of retrofuturism by being required to ‘input a code’ as an ’employee’ of the company. With that said, this feature can also be turned off, if one so chooses.

While these nods to retro sensibilities will be well-received by the right players, one of REPOSE‘s most polarizing features may be its maze-like level design.

I was often struck by how much thought and effort must have gone into the layouts as the paths I took wound around, up, down and back to somewhere ages before. However, impressive as it was, it didn’t take long before I lost my sense of where I was supposed to go and with it my motivation to continue the cycle of trial and error.

Something I was irked by was there was no option to rebind controls to the mouse. Personally, I would have preferred right clicking over having to hold a button for the windup attack as that felt less natural to me. Navigating menus or submenus is also inconsistent, alternating between WASD and the arrow keys, which isn’t a big deal, but it does seem strange to not have chosen to pick one or the other.

While I didn’t finish REPOSE, I did make it far enough to have unraveled some of the mysteries surrounding the Company, and it’s all fairly interesting — but I also felt that there could’ve been more opportunities for engagement with the NPCs and the lore that appeared in a few areas. My attention did start to wander at times and perhaps more of a story hook would have boosted that engagement.

Overall, I enjoyed visiting the world of REPOSE because I appreciate the retro look and feel, but the gameplay loop of stomping around looking for oxygen tanks, running out of stamina and respawning at the last bed before venturing out again is more tedious than it is challenging.

I’m sure there’s plenty of wandering left to do and there are more questions to be answered, but I’ll leave the Company to its devices and the corpses of its employees undisturbed.

Rating: 6 out of 10

Buy Repose — PC

Disclosures: This game was developed and published by Bozó Atilla Bertold and published by Akupara Games. The game is currently available only on PC. It was obtained via publisher and reviewed for PC. Approximately 1.5 hours were devoted to the campaign mode. The game was not finished. There is no multiplayer mode.

Parents: This game is not rated by the ESRB, but if it were me, I would rate it T for disturbing imagery and violence. The player will find dead NPCs in different stages of decomposition and have to kill or be killed by various weapons.

Colorblind Modes: The presentation is strictly black and white which makes it colorblind-friendly.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: The dialogue is all text-based and the gameplay does not rely on audio cues making it fully accessible.

Remappable controls: The keybindings are remappable, but there’s no option to rebind to mouse controls.

The post REPOSE Review appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

HIGH Snow Bros. finally gets a successor!

LOW Camera controls are severely lacking.

WTF The final gauntlet…

Those with an affinity for spending coins at their local arcade back in the day will certainly rejoice to see likenesses of Nick and Tom (actually, their offspring) in a brand-new Snow Bros. title — it’s been a long wait since the 1990 original! As one of those fans, I was immediately hit by a warm wave of nostalgia upon learning that Wonderland existed.

The original Snow Bros. was a 2D action-platformer featuring co-op play where snowmen avoid baddies before taking them out with well-timed snowballs that roll down platforms and engulf anyone in their path. It had a perfect philosophy, a hefty dose of challenge, and — most importantly — a masterfully designed set of levels.

Fast forward to the end of 2024, and we have Snow Bros. Wonderland, a title that aesthetically continues the theme of two snowmen stopping a villain’s plans to turn the world into a lava land.

Our heroes Nick Jr. and Tom Jr. (sons of the original duo) are now in 3D and possess their parents’ ability to throw an unlimited supply of snowballs into foes, quickly turning them into giant rolling balls. Once that’s accomplished, players can find the best use for these enlarged snowballs, whether it be simply kicking one into other foes, riding it to reach higher elevations, or throwing it like a basketball to hit a distant pressure plate.

Snow Bros. Wonderland is framed like a fairytale and told via short animations that play out between each of its worlds in which we steadily clear out a set of stages and end with a boss fight. Unfortunately, Wonderland‘s setting and approach to storytelling leave a lot to be desired, due in equal parts to the lack of clever plot twists and lack of characterization.

Aside from the titular duo, only Winda – the mandatory “waify-material” character (unlocked as a playable skin at the end of the campaign) makes regular appearances, though not the substantive kind. Also, the aforementioned cutscenes after bosses are presented in a bafflingly meek manner. They’re animated stills where only the characters’ lips move in accordance with voiceover, and nothing interesting happens regardless. I’m not sure why they were even included. However, Snow Bros. has never been about story or worldbuilding, so it’s not that big an issue.

Of course, this leads me to gameplay. Pelting an enemy with snowballs turns the foe into a large snow boulder with a reticule showing which direction the ball would rush if I was to kick it. I was satisfied with this inclusion, as it clearly displays an understanding of the original Snow Bros. mechanics. Being able to track where exactly the ball will roll in a 3D world is essential, and upon giving it the boot, it acted just as I hoped — it does indeed flatten the nearest enemies and eventually sends them off into outer space.

I was curious to see where the devs would take this awesome idea next and how much further they could evolve it, but there was no such luck. What soon dawned on me was that the mechanic of engulfing enemies in snow and using them against their brethren is actually not the core of the Snow Bros. Wonderland experience. Instead, what we have is something more similar to a standard 3D platformer along the lines of the modern Super Mario games. Unfortunately, the content can’t meet that standard, and also suffers from some bewilderingly outdated choices that negate the rose-colored affection I have for the original. 

Primarily, proper camera and controls for 3D platformers like Snow Bros. Wonderland are crucial. Nearly thirty-year-old titles like Super Mario 64 and Banjo Kazooie got it right and led the way, but Wonderland’s camera controls are nonexistent. The available view provides an acceptable perspective most of the time, but it’s also prone to letting moving platforms obscure the player’s view. 

Also, while I did beat the game, I was never at ease with the finicky platforming and never felt particularly ‘in control’ of anything. Worse was when camera and controls both worked in concert to increase the difficulty — tasking the player with jumping to a platform at the deep end of the screen while level geometry makes gauging the distance a pure guess is not a good experience.

Moreover, there’s a hidden timer present throughout each level. While the original punished players for not being able to defeat all enemies in a given time by spawning an unbeatable reaper-like character, it was perfectly acceptable back then given its 2D nature and the ability to observe the entire screen at once. In contrast, Wonderland features much larger 3D stages whose plains and elevations enjoy overlapping each other, and being cornered by a ‘punishment’ entity like a reaper who can one-shot players who weren’t able to make it through a given course of dastardly jumping challenges quickly enough — well, it’s not exactly cool. (Pun intended.) 

Luckily, dying doesn’t carry many negative consequences, as we merely lose a small portion of accumulated currency that’s used to unlock upgrades like being able to run slightly faster or to kick a ball further away than before — all aspects that are mostly helpful, yet Wonderland’s combat won’t be a thorn in anyone’s side, even without them.  

Progression-wise, Wonderland introduces new moves (like a mid-air twirl attack reminiscent of a certain Italian plumber) and new types of obstacles with each new biome — things like lighting strikes or floods that limit the player’s movements or trap them, contributing to a palpable spike in difficulty. While none of this sounds bad on paper, what’s readily apparent is Wonderland’s inept execution. 

For example, many of the levels task the player with transferring a snowball across significant space while riding on a platform big enough for both of them only if the player were to stand on top of the ball. Since running on top of the ball is a learned skill here, the catch is to get in position while figuring out how to keep the ball frozen during the entire trip. Easier said than done as the character’s weight makes the ball move ever so slightly, immediately causing a fall? Worse, this movement is inconsistent — it sometimes happens but not always. Once the player manages to finally get it done, they’ve likely wasted so much time that the reaper appears, adding insult to injury.

Such a wide range of inconsistencies results in an experience that never feels right — Snow Bros Wonderland is ultimately a game that’s on par with trying to squeeze a marshmallow through a keyhole. Even if one succeeds in doing so, it’s definitely not worth the trouble in the end. 

Rating: 5.0 out of 10 

Disclosures: This game was developed by TATSUJIN Co., Ltd., Toaplan and Bitwave AB, and published by TATSUJIN Co., Ltd., Clear River Games, Toaplan and Toaplan Co., Ltd. It is available on Switch, PS4/5, and PC. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the Switch Lite. Approximately 7 hours of play were devoted to the game, and it was completed. The game supports co-op multiplayer for up to four players. 

Parents: This game has received an E rating from the ESRB and contains Fantasy Violence. The game features cartoony characters and snow-day aesthetics, while the focus is mostly on platforming challenges rather than combat encounters.

Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes available.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: All dialogue in this game is shown via textboxes, so they’re easy to keep track of at all times. All enemy attacks are clearly telegraphed on-screen with enemies signaling when they will strike next and in which general direction. No audio cues are necessary. This game is fully accessible.

Remappable Controls: This game offers a controller diagram and there are two control presets to swap between.

The post Snow Bros. Wonderland Review appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

HIGH Deftly balances difficulty and offers well-designed levels.

LOW Being unable to change jump direction in mid-air should have died in the ’80s

WTF The breathy way Valkyries whisper “impressive”…

Since its debut over ten years ago, Völgarr the Viking has garnered a reputation for being an unapologetically brutal retro platformer, reflecting the difficulty, aesthetics and mechanics of ’80s games like Ghosts ‘n’ Goblins and Rastan, while still bringing new ideas to the table. This sequel delivers the same great action, now with a dose of modernization.

In the original, Völgarr was dwelling in Valhalla, mortally wounded following his quest for vengeance against the Lizardmen until he was brought back to life in order to slay the dragon Fafnir. Having fulfilled his duties, he returned to Midgard only to find his home destroyed by the forces of a lich named Frakkus — and this is where Völgarr the Viking II picks up.

But let’s be honest — none of that exposition matters when the player gets to control a hulking Viking in a 2D action-platform adventure, sending enemies flying across the map with an enchanted spear or making them burst into bits with a swing of his mighty sword.

At first, it would seem that the player is fairly limited in terms of their arsenal and moveset, but as the player advances, gathering more powerups along the way (which do not carry over after death, much like a roguelite) and expanding the strength and range of their attacks, they should soon feel empowered enough to destroy enemies unimpeded before reaching their next checkpoint.

I love a good classic haunted forest level, and the one in Völgarr II is a great one, reminding me of some long-ago classics like Castlevania II‘s festering swamps crawling with zombies that grow in numbers and strength as darkness descends — truly “a horrible night to have a curse” — but it features many new obstacles such as creature-spawning trees and fields of confusion, altering the player’s controls. Other areas feature intricate grids of lightning rods and teleporting enemies, not to mention Doom Knights that took seven hits to kill, and Frankenstein-like Skoobies that came back to life while constantly threatening to whack me into pools of acid between increasingly-narrow and difficult-to-reach platforms.

It’s not all about the combat, though. Compared to the first, Völgarr the Viking II is far more nuanced as there are many puzzle elements that call for unconventional solutions. For example, in the second world the player must reorient their understanding of the physics to navigate watery levels and cut down people who are being mind-controlled by mysterious tentacle creatures latched onto their heads. In the fourth world, the player must tactfully descend into quicksand and walk underneath wind turbines without sinking so deep as to fall off the map.

There are also some new options that make the experience more accessible and, therefore, more enjoyable. When they die, players have the option to continue as Völgarr but in zombie form. Choosing to continue as an undead grants three lives and invincibility when taking damage — it does not, however, prevent fall deaths. The downside to being a zombie is that players must give up whatever treasure they had amassed up to that point in whichever world they’re currently playing — and some might say their dignity, as well.

Obviously, avoiding such an outcome is crucial for speedrunners, but for those who just want to experience the game, the inclusion of an option to continue by becoming undead is a thoughtful gesture on the part of the developers. Until I discovered this feature, I was tempted to quit before I had even reached the first boss, but opting for “zombie mode” allowed me to enjoy myself again as I focused less on combat and more on platforming, which made everything seem far more achievable. That said, even though I had every right to finish the game as an undead, it made me feel as though I had somehow cheated — but I won’t let gamer guilt color my overall experience.

Another support that the developers introduced was the addition of Valkyries who show up every now and then to grant the player power-ups and simultaneously whisper “impressive” in a curiously sultry voice before they fly back up to Valhalla. As with the original Völgarr, the best power up is easily the flame sword which does twice as much damage and is twice as fast as the default blade.

However, while the developers have obviously taken steps to move the series forward, there are still some fundamental issues carried over from the original Völgarr — especially the overall difficulty and controls that make it feel not like it’s evoking a bygone era of gaming, but more that it’s stuck in it.

The most frustrating elements were tied to Völgarr‘s stubborn commitment to replicating not only the aesthetic aspects that make players nostalgic, but also the considerable limitations of retro platformers that the developers clearly grew up with. For example, the inability to change direction mid-jump may have been the norm for titles in the ‘80s, but it’s an obnoxious bit of game design now, and we’ve come a long way since then.

Unlike the first Völgarr (which, frankly, put me at risk of transforming into Völgarr himself, shouting “GRAH!” and wanting to throw my Switch on the floor to stomp on it) I found myself blissfully unaware of time as I played through Völgarr the Viking II over the course of several flights. Those who enjoyed the first Völgarr or other hardcore action-platformers similar to it will find Völgarr the Viking II to be a nice shot in the arm. However, without more fundamental improvements, the end result is an experience that feels more like DLC than a proper sequel.

Rating: 6.5 out of 10

Disclosures: This game was developed by Crazy Viking Studios and published by Digital Eclipse. It is currently available on PC, XBX/S, Switch and PS4/5. Code was obtained from the publisher and reviewed on Switch. Approximately 5 hours were devoted to the campaign and the game was completed. There are no multiplayer modes.

Parents: This game is rated T for Blood and Gore, Partial Nudity and Violence. Players will often die horribly such as melting after falling in acid and they can dispatch their foes in gory detail, watching as they explode into blood and bones after Völgarr’s spear or sword finds purchase.

Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes available.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: This game has no dialogue. There is some text that appears during the introduction and the ending, but it cannot be altered and/or resized. Sometimes, players will be attacked from off-screen without any warning besides an audio cue. The game therefore is not fully accessible.

Remappable controls: The controls can be remapped.

The post Völgarr The Viking II Review appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

HIGH Offers a great mix of Bloodborne and Mario Kart. 

LOW Battle mode is a major weak spot. No online multi is a missed opportunity.

WTF Why is this game not getting more attention?

When I first saw an Instagram reel with footage of what was then called Bloodborne Kart, I couldn’t believe it. I thought to myself, “Is this real? Who came up with this and how are they getting away with it?”

Having beaten Bloodborne within the last year, I could not have been more ready to enjoy the similarities, like the ubiquitous “YOU DIED” message (in FromSoftware’s signature Adobe Garamond Bold font) and bigger things like the obvious nods in the courses, the weapons, karts and campaign. This included many characters who acted as stand-ins for the real things — Father Gregory (a motorcycle-riding Father Gascoigne) and Nicholas (a sillier and even more irritating Micolash with a birdcage on his head in place of a Mensis Cage).

Following their incredibly faithful PSX demake of Bloodborne (which is still available for download on itch.io) the devs got ready to venture beyond the website with what was then called Bloodborne Kart — but they had the foresight to avoid legal trouble by changing the name to Nightmare Kart before releasing it on Steam.

LWMedia could have easily cashed in by making a shallow, uninspired kart racer with a Bloodborne skin and sold it for $10 or more, but they chose to not only make it free, but also very replayable and deeply infused with the spirit of Bloodborne by way of late ’90s/early 2000s racing games.

Most of the time, there are twelve competitors in each race, each with items that are unique to them. The game offers familiar-looking drivers like the Hoonter, Onnete, Herman, and Dream Watchers at the start. However, to unlock certain characters like Father Gregory or Nicholas, the player first needs to defeat them either in a race or a battle — more on this later.

The courses are often challenging, dynamic and engaging, just as the best Mario Kart courses are. Pocket Dream Course was one of my biggest highlights from the campaign due to its dreamy cloudscape, multi-dimensional level design, a soft pastel color palette and jaunty score, courtesy of Evelyn Lark, AKA The Noble Demon.

The weapon power-ups are all satisfying and often gruesome – there’s a gatling gun that tears into other karts, but the chipper chain wheels were especially satisfying as they allow the player to slash other racers by running into them with a visceral camera close-up to show blood and gore.

There were other power ups that made Nightmare Kart stand out from other racers, such as transfusers that allow players to regain health from being attacked, blood droplets that increase players’ speed, and aether vials that allow speed boosts by skidding on turns and performing stunts on jumps–just as Mario Kart players have been doing in every installment since Mario Kart Wii.

Apart from the Bloodborne motif, the other half of the experience are the retro elements. I noticed from the start how committed Nightmare Kart was to evoking Y2K-era video game aesthetics, from wobbly horizontal lines on the screen down to the “memory card” save files. Between the 64-bit music and the PSX graphics, the whole experience felt like winding the clock back to when I lived for staying over at a friend’s house to play PS1 games back in the day.

Another throwback of sorts is the inclusion of splitscreen multiplayer. It’s such a rarity now, as few titles offer local multiplayer of any sort. As I did back then, I found that I still enjoyed the experience of sitting on the couch and periodically peeking over to see where my friend was on the map and what he was up to, even if I had to take eyes off of my own character for a moment.

While Nightmare Kart nails both Bloodborne and oldschool karting, I did have some qualms with a few aspects. For example, I noticed that many of the courses were so dark that it could be difficult to see what was ahead, and this tough visibility made timely turning a challenge.

In some courses, I was annoyed by the amount of creatures that would get in my way during races, forcing me to come to a full stop or take damage, such as the many beasts of Miralodia (a stand-in for Yharnam.) However, my main source of frustration was the battle mode.

Similar to Mario Kart‘s Balloon Battles in which racers eliminate other racers’ balloons by hitting each other with shells or items, Nightmare Kart has a battle mode in which players must drive around a small arena, and whoever kills the most racers before time runs out wins. Unlike the race courses, Nightmare Kart‘s battle arenas were generally much jankier and harder to navigate, to the point it felt like a chore to finish any of the battles — and these comprise about a third of the campaign!

While there are some rough edges for sure, for the majority of the time I found myself smiling like an idiot and admiring the developers for their nods to fans who remember Bloodborne’s story enough to appreciate it. I loved how respectful Nightmare Kart was of the source material but at the same time, it didn’t take itself too seriously, acting as both a parody and a love letter.

Even after rolling credits, I still feel the same incredulousness that I felt when I first saw Nightmare Kart video on Instagram, only now my question is “How did we possibly deserve such a treat?”

Rating: 8 out of 10

Disclosures: This game was developed and published by LWMedia. It is currently available on PC. It was downloaded for free from Steam and reviewed for PC. Approximately 4 hours were devoted to the campaign mode. The game was finished. Multiplayer is available for up to four players, but can only be played locally on splitscreen.

Parents: This game is not rated by the ESRB but contains Violence and Blood and Gore. Players will attack and be attacked by other kart racers, with not only guns and explosives but also brutal weapons such as crescent axes (hunter axes) and beast razors (saw cleavers) which cause those who are hit to gush blood, but the gore is not especially visceral. If I were to give it a rating, I would give it T.

Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes available.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: This game offers subtitles. The subtitles cannot be altered and/or resized. Often, players will be attacked without any warning besides an audio cue. The game therefore is not fully accessible.

Remappable controls: The controls can be remapped.

The post Nightmare Kart Review appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

HIGH Great premise!

LOW Feels too gamey and artificial — no emotional stakes.

WTF I really can’t get over these low obstacles?

EDITOR’S NOTE: This review originally was originally published on September 2, 2002

*

With the dawning of online play for consoles this year, a big selling point is that players will get the chance to interact with live people for an increased human element in games. The idea has merit, but in my opinion videogames that take place offline haven’t done more than scratch the surface of offering similar experiences through simulation and programming. I don’t have anything against going online, nor am I a huge believer that A.I. can replace real people. That said, I don’t think that implementing a modem feature is the final answer to providing qualities that the vast majority of videogames lack, or even ignore altogether.  

Abstract feelings and concepts like companionship, love and trust are common everyday things that often don’t translate well into the electronic worlds gamers populate. Most RPGs (Role-Playing Games) make attempts with varying degrees of success, but very few games outside this genre even try to make social and emotional content a factor. It may not be an easy thing to convert into program language, but in my view it’s a frontier of videogames that has gone practically unexplored since the medium’s inception. The Thing, from Computer Artworks, makes an attempt at combining the human psyche with the framework of an Action hybrid, and the results are mixed.

With its source material taken from the 1982 John Carpenter film starring Kurt Russell, the videogame adaptation of The Thing takes the form of a third-person adventure that picks up right where the movie left off. Plunging the player into the heart of Antarctica, it’s your job to discover what happened to a missing science crew and take care of any situations that arise along the way.

In most respects, the game handles like a standard Action outing. There are items to pick up, weapons to find and equip and locked doors to get past. In fact, beside the fact that I was mildly disoriented by the world spinning around your character as you re-orient, this could just have easily been any one of a number of similar games. However, The Thing’s unique gameplay hook is the teammate system, which is what I’m going to spend the most time discussing.

In the film, the “Thing” was an alien that was capable of perfectly replicating another living creature. Because of this particular ability, the humans dealing with it were racked with paranoia and distrust for each other because it was almost impossible to tell the difference between real human and gruesome invader. The same elements of trust and fear are featured in the game, but this time in an interactive (and unsatisfying) fashion.

The game’s main character is a standard-issue action hero and must interact with three different classes of people: Engineers who fix electronics and unlock doors, Soldiers that possess good fighting skills and Medics, who are capable of fully healing any character except themselves. Each of these types has skills that are integral to your progress in the game. However, when you initially meet them, many will suspect that you of being alien and require some convincing before helping you.

The way you do this is based on a number of things, but the easiest and most common is to give them a gun and ammo as a token of goodwill, or to let them see you killing the monsters you encounter. Conversely, if you do things that seem questionable such as taking away their weapon or shooting humans (even on accident) during a firefight, their trust will drop. If they have faith in you, it’s smooth sailing. If they don’t, they won’t help you- and even worse, may even attack you. Fear is also a factor, and if a person in your party becomes overwhelmed with fright, they can go crazy and become ineffective.

This interesting system was the biggest draw for me, and at heart I think it’s great idea. However, the actual execution falls far short of the concept. The problem is that while the basic idea of “trust” is sound, the paper-thin characters are relegated to being little more than another set of implements for you to use. They lack any convincing level of human behavior and are found, killed, disappear and otherwise get replaced so often, it becomes less about maintaining a relationship and more about tool manipulation. The shallowness and obvious lack of any significant emotional content undercuts the game’s defining feature and ends up only hinting at its full potential.

When coming across a locked door, the only thing required to convince an Engineer to open it for you is to give him an item- despite how much he mistrusted you only seconds before. While something along these lines wouldn’t be so hard to swallow if it only happened sporadically, you’ll replay this little game of favorites far more often than is tolerable. Each time you go through this process, it becomes quite clear that it’s more an overused gameplay gimmick rather than being a significant part of the plot or narrative structure. There is simply no lasting or emotional impact.

Besides my disappointment in the handling of the psychological and relationship elements, the game suffers from a number of rough edges that only serve to further tarnish the overall experience.

As I said above, the game picks up right where the movie left off, and I mean this in the most literal sense. The game’s intro and beginning sequences felt like they were specifically made for someone who was already intimately familiar with the source material. In preparation for doing this review I had re-watched the DVD so it was fresh in my mind, but I imagine it would be hard for people to understand what was going on or to feel drawn in if they hadn’t seen it. Similarly, I found the direction, narrative and overall polish of the game to possess an off-putting “no-frills” quality. Things feel jerky with jump cuts and a lack of cohesive flow that are only magnified by the segmented progression through the areas and the large number of interchangeable teammates. It’s especially ironic that the storytelling here is so shaky since the film was a virtual horror masterpiece.

Another barrier to immersion was that the level of realism is inconsistent, and conveniently tossed aside when necessary. While trekking through a blizzard, you’re stopped in your tracks by a waist-high chain link fence that can’t be destroyed or climbed over. You can’t enter buildings except through the designated entrances even though there might be a gaping hole in the wall large enough to drive a snowcat through. At one point, my team was stopped by ankle-high rubble. These annoying choices combined with the shallow nature of the trust system did an effective job of never letting me forget that it was all just a game.

On a technical note, be aware that the game requires a massive amount of space on the PlayStation 2’s memory card. I actually had to delete four other save files before I had enough free space for just one file of The Thing. I’m no programmer, but it reeks of laziness or unfamiliarity with the hardware since there doesn’t seem to be an extraordinarily large amount of information to be saved.

Altogether, The Thing’s trust and interface system is an interesting kernel that I’d like to see plucked out and transplanted into something more fertile. If this core element was reworked into a new game that smoothed the rough edges and added more depth, I think Computer Artworks would probably have something unique enough to stand out from the crowd. As it is the game isn’t all bad, but with the promise of its sole standout feature being left mostly unfulfilled, it ends up being far too ordinary in the face of what looks to be an outstanding (and competitive) holiday season.

Final Score: 6.5

Developer: Computer Artworks
Publisher: Black Label Games
Platform: PlayStation 2

EDITOR’S NOTE: This review was written 22 years ago, we were not tracking accessibility information at that time and we no longer have access to the game in order to check. Apologies!!

The post The Thing (PS2) Review appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

HIGH This may be some of the best game-feel of the decade.

LOW Honestly, the soccer minigame kinda sucks.

WTF Feeding your pet fish… fish-fries.

Have you ever pressed a button in a game and felt genuine joy from the act? Nothing is accomplished, there’s no end achieved, yet it’s so satisfying? That’s Tiny Terry’s Turbo Trip for me, time and again. It’s bright, colorful, and just the right level of eccentric.

The story centers on the titular Terry trying to drive to space to become famous. In order to do so, he takes a job as a taxi driver and… then never does his job, yet his boss continues to happily upgrade his taxi as he collects “SUPER JUNK” that improves his car’s boost meter. Why is he doing all this? Because his parents decided to punish him for not doing well in school. I think it’s fair to say he doesn’t really get the point of the ‘punishment’ as he meanders about the island.

Along the way, players get to know all of the island’s inhabitants, some of whom are even more unhinged than Terry. Every conversation is bursting with personality, feeling like a classic cartoon brought to life. I loved it when they let me choose Terry’s punchlines, as there’s some truly outrageous responses. There’s some hilarious satire as well, from the world’s most ethical criminal to panicking government employees and a pair of exhausted small business owners grappling with the consequences of Terry’s chaos.

Okay, so it’s funny and over the top, but what is it? Well, at its core, Tiny Terry is a 3D platformer… yet it also isn’t. Players aren’t going to just run around gathering up loose bits of trash. To gather up all the junk necessary to upgrade Terry’s car, there’s an absolute litany of minigames that turn the game on its head. Even Terry’s various tools, like a bug catcher, shovel, and lead pipe serve multiple purposes, either for movement or completing quests. The entire experience is sheer spontaneity.

There is an open world island to explore, with sandboxy elements, but regardless of the chaos Terry causes, it’s not a kid-friendly crime sandbox game either. It’s an inherently amorphous experience where players find the fun through sheer novelty and variety of tasks. Death isn’t a concern either — the worst that can happen is losing some of Terry’s cash, which is easily replenished through quests and scavenging for buried treasure with a shovel.

One minute, Terry’s freely navigating the 3D world to hunt down chimes for an arthaus mushroom sculpture. In the blink of an eye, he’s in an isometric soccer game, smacking his opponents aside without penalty. There’s a dedicated questline about dueling Terry’s rival in top-down bumper car combat, and these are just a few examples.

In the span of the six hours I played, I robbed crabs, helped a failing restaurant, tried to convince a man that he was literally on fire, dug up six trash cans buried in all manner of places, collected and ate bugs, fed Terry’s fish, dismantled the concept of monetary value, stole cars for a child, bought synthetic gummy pets, discovered how mud can be used to generate electricity, attended a public gathering, paid $660,000 for a used top hat, played soccer with a lead pipe, achieved enlightenment — and I’m still not done because it’s just so packed with things to do!

The most incredible part is how it all feels good to do — it’s smooth, rich, and precisely balanced. This alone is an achievement, as nailing great gamefeel can be a nightmare, but Tiny Terry does it time and again. This is a project worth studying just for how effectively it ensures every action feels pleasant to perform.

Despite saying all of this, my words aren’t even beginning to do justice to the absolute anarchic madness that is Tiny Terry. Nothing can prepare one for what lies in store across this incredibly charming, unrelentingly creative experience.

Honestly, the only thing that stunk out of all m time with it was the soccer minigame. I get what developer snekflat was trying for, but the AI opponents are a bit too good at competing with Terry given the forced camera angle and no ability to dribble — players can only kick-shot and smack with Terry’s pipe. I managed to score high enough to beat the minigame’s criteria but it’s easily the least enjoyable part of the adventure by a country mile. (Also sometimes Terry’s car can get stuck on geometry a bit too quickly.) Everything else is darn-near flawless, as far as I’m concerned.

Tiny Terry is concise yet vast, comically snarky yet endearingly heartfelt… it has to be seen to be believed, and it’s everything I didn’t know I wanted, in the best way possible. So, for anyone needing a mental vacation and a few hours spent not worrying about the world? This is the ticket.

Final Score: 9.5 out of 10

Disclosures: This game is developed by snekflat and published by Super Rare Originals. It is currently available on PC. This copy of Tiny Terry’s Turbo Trip was provided by the publisher and reviewed on the PC. Six hours were dedicated to the single-player campaign, and it was completed.

Parents:  This game is not rated by the ESRB, but only contains for Mild Cartoon Violence. If your child is capable of watching something just a wee bit spicy like Gravity Falls, they’ll be fine here. There’s nothing adult, and everything is extremely lighthearted. The only dark joke is “Burning Bernie”, who the player will periodically find on fire (Bernie will express no concern) and who will eventually turn into ash offscreen. Terry will respond “this is sad” and then collect Bernie’s glasses. This is the only real moment of dark humor in the entire game. 

Colorblind modes: There are no colorblind modes available.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: This game features subtitles and otherwise relies almost entirely on visual prompts for how to proceed. However, there are wind chimes to find which rely on audio cues, so I’d say this is Not Fully Accessible.

Remappable controls: Yes, the controls are remappable.

The post Tiny Terry’s Turbo Trip Review appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

HIGH Hitting a huge group of goblins with the wand for the first time.

LOW The final third feels like a letdown.

WTF The musical mid-game box battle.

With a return to their mid-’90s roots, first-person shooters have had something of a renaissance in recent years. These retro-styled titles are a welcome shot of adrenaline for a genre that has long become tired and stale. Chop Goblins is the distillation of this genre down to its most potent elements.

With an average playthrough lasting only 30 minutes, there is no room for Chop Goblins to slow down. Upon starting a new game, the first thing I notice is the music. Synth-heavy and bizarrely upbeat, the soundtrack has me bobbing my head as I blow away goblins in time with the tunes. This emphasis on rhythm creates a sense of urgency — in reality, there is no time limit, but I can’t shake the feeling that I need to move as fast as I possibly can.

Theoretically, Chop Goblins is a run-based shooter with an emphasis on achieving the highest score possible — but I’d be lying if I said maximizing my score multiplier is what propels me through each level. That propulsion instead comes from the very intentional design decisions, both in the visuals and gameplay.

To call the aesthetics utilitarian may be something of an overstatement — textures are basic to the point of being boring, barely registering as I dart through. Rather, the developer has focused on lighting to
differentiate each stage. While the details blur together, a castle corridor bathed in blue or hard white sun on marble columns stand out clearly in my mind. This offers a sense of visual identity for each section without the cost of high-res textures or assets — I’m moving too quickly to notice the details anyway.

The enemy design, on the other hand, is more noteworthy. While still decidedly lo-fi, careful attention has been paid to ensuring each enemy type has an immediately recognizable silhouette and easily-readable move-set. With flailing arms, big bulbous heads full of teeth and pitch-shifted voices, the titular goblins provide ripe targets as I blast my way through their lilting cries of “Chop! Chop! Chop!” Each level offers a new enemy type, steadily increasing in difficulty and capability.

Forgoing the randomized procedural generation typical of run-based games, Chop Goblins instead relies on carefully-crafted enemy encounters, hidden rooms, and alternate routes to keep subsequent playthroughs interesting. As I fly forward, there are multiple paths, and I choose without thinking as I make steady progress, rarely feeling lost or having to double back. Suddenly the walls around me are gone. I see a gaggle of goblins in the clearing ahead and a carefully-aimed shot hits a gas can. There’s an explosion, and for a moment, I can breathe as the world slows down for the first time since hitting ‘New Game’ and bloody chunks float suspended in the air.

Set pieces such as this emerge organically from the violence around me, providing strategic opportunity, shock and humor. However, some incongruous design decisions in later levels slow my progress.

For example, there are nominal attempts at puzzles that feel out of place — these rarely require more than simple environmental observation, but with a runtime of 30 minutes, they prove an unnecessary distraction from the otherwise insistent speed. Additionally, Chop Goblins crescendos early with the final stage feeling redundant and anti-climactic. However, the overall experience is so brief that I barely have
time to register the complaint.

Scope is a critical part of any project, and Chop Goblins understands this perfectly. By setting their sights modestly and emphasizing speed and tone, the developer manages an almost perfect execution of their vision — there is no waste, and every element keeps me engaged in its mad rush.

Rating: 8.5 out of 10

— Ryan Nalley

Disclosures: This game is developed and published by David Szymanski. It is currently
available on PC and Switch. This copy of the game was obtained via paid download and reviewed on the PC. Approximately 2 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode, and the game
was completed. There are no multiplayer modes.

Parents: According to the ESRB, this game is rated T and contains Blood and Violence. The enemies are all fantasy based (monsters and goblins) and while there is plenty of blood, it’s low fidelity and non-realistic. When killed with an explosive enemies will explode into chunks of blood, but it’s all presented in a light-hearted cartoony fashion. There is a ‘Kids Mode’ setting which cuts down on the blood and changes the color to green — this also removes the chunks of blood when a goblin is blown up.

Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes available.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: This game does not offer subtitles. The only spoken dialogue in the game is in the form of random phrases from the enemies and is not represented visually. The enemies are constantly making noise, and while playing without sound I did notice the enemies to be more difficult to locate, particularly in more complex levels. All other sound effects have an accompanying visual cue. All narrative information is conveyed through text boxes preceding each level and is not spoken aloud. The in-game text cannot be altered and/or resized. This game is not fully accessible.

Remappable Controls: Yes, this game offers fully remappable controls. Additionally, all analog inputs (left and right sticks and triggers) can be calibrated individually to account for sensitivity and
deadzones.

The post Chop Goblins Review appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

HIGH Incredibly fast action. Colorful and vibrant.

LOW It starts crazy difficult, ramps up to nigh impossible. Disappointing overall package.

WTF No, seriously, just WTF?

I was midway through my first playthrough of Cannon Dancer: Osman (we’ll get to that in a moment) when my character, Kirin, made his way onto a pirate ship with dirty laundry festooned on the riggings.  Moments later, he was standing on a sword in the middle of the sky floating in front of a giant golden woman, and then he was fighting robots and demons in the middle of a jungle. 

After my head stopped spinning from the barrage of insane fever-dream imagery I had just been bombarded with, I remembered that this game was a spiritual sequel to 1989’s Strider.  “There’s no way Strider was this batshit crazy,” I said to myself, and I immediately purchased it on PSN to test my theory. 

…After fighting a mecha-ape almost immediately, I ate crow and realized that the ’90s were just weird, man. 

During the course of CD:O, Kirin is tasked with ending the brutal reign of Abdullah the Slaver.  While this character is already problematic on many levels, apparently she’s quite evil for… reasons we’re never really shown.  Along the way, Kirin must also brutally murder hundreds of underlings and several Bengal tigers along with countless robots and bizarre human-machine hybrids.  He also encounters a woman who claims to be a relative, and he celebrates this reunion by…. spin-kicking her to death. The story is a mishmash of cyberpunk, revenge tale, and hallucination that is baffling at its best.  Granted, story is not the main reason we’re here, but… wow.

I’m still not sure why the it’s subtitled Osman in the west, but only called Cannon Dancer in Japan. Both versions are included in this release, but I couldn’t tell the difference.  The cutscenes play out the same and gameplay is identical. 

Both titles are 2D side-scrolling action beat-’em-ups where Kirin kicks the living bejesus out of everything he encounters, and also engages in some light platforming while gaining extra abilities via destroying standard power-up capsules. These powers include increased attack range, more health, and ghostly images that mimic his movements, extending his attacks even further.  I refer to these as Kirin’s “stunt doubles.” 

Once it starts, the action never lets up thanks to some thrilling set-pieces such as a memorable sequence where Kirin must outrun a truck down a steep hill, making an almost blind jump to safety. Enemies are many and varied, and they all blow up real good or explode into chunky sprays of gore when beaten.

That said, progression was a bit confusing. Bosses sometimes appear in a different order which varies the gameplay a bit, but I’m not totally sure what triggers it. There also comes a point about midway through the campaign when one of the bosses tells our hero to “remember how he died,” accompanied by a spinning icon that appears to represent his memories… or something? Attacking this ‘flashback’ seems to change the boss order, or at least the stage and background, but I can’t make heads or tails of it — I just chalk it up to more of the wackiness that is this game.

So this all sounds mostly great, but what’s wrong with Cannon Dancer: Osman? On a basic level, nothing. 

The controls are responsive, the action is frenetic, and each level constantly barrages players with stuff to do.  However, it starts out somewhat difficult (understandable, as it originated as an arcade title designed to eat money) and it quickly ramps up to damn-near impossible. 

Enemies appear at the end of every tough jump spraying bullets and lasers, bosses can completely evade attacks while spamming special moves that can kill Kirin almost instantly, and it only gets harder from there. In fairness, CD:O expects players to start with the Standard mode which allows access to several cheats and save states so they can learn patterns and strategies, but even then, Osman is a tough nut to crack.

More frustrating are some of CD:O‘s hidden quirks.  For instance, Kirin is quite nimble and able to climb many surfaces.  Unfortunately, which surfaces are climbable isn’t obvious.  I have no issue with trial-and-error play, but I draw the line at fiddly overhead handles that may or may not allow Kirin to grab them, based on pixel-perfect orientation. I also don’t love blind jumps, misleading signposting, and the ability to die during a freakin’ cutscene.  Cannon Dancer: Osman is also bad at telling players what Kirin’s abilities are — he has access to several throw moves, but they must be discovered (usually accidentally) them during play.

Finally, I wish the package offered a bit more than just the two gameplay modes and two indistinguishable versions of the same game.  For the price, there should be some making-of videos, developer interviews, production art, some history on the title, or just anything to round it out and make it feel like a better value for money.

Overall, I enjoyed the concept of Osman more than the execution.  There’s a decent action title here, but the steep difficulty and lack of bells and whistles make it a tough sell.

Rating: 6 out of 10

Disclosures: This game is developed by Mitchell Corporation, United Games Entertainment GmbH and co-published by Mitchell Corporation, United Games Entertainment GmbH, Atlus.  It is currently available on XBO, XBX/S, PS4/PS5, and Switch. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the PS5. Approximately 3 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode, and the game was completed several times. There are no multiplayer modes.

Parents: According to the ESRB, this game is rated T and contains Blood and Gore, Suggestive Themes, and Violence.The game features fighting against various human (and inhuman) enemies, many of which explode in a shower of pixelated blood when dispatched.  There are images of scantily clad women, and a scene depicting torture of the player character. 

Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes available.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: This game offers subtitles. The subtitles cannot be altered and/or resized. All text in the game is displayed on-screen as subtitles.  The subtitles animate strangely in that they scroll at strange times, but everything is legible.  The cries of defeated enemies are not given subtitles, but visual cues alert the player that they have been beaten.  All story-related information is displayed as needed. In my view, this is fully accessible.

Remappable Controls: Yes, this game offers fully remappable controls.

The post Cannon Dancer: Osman Review appeared first on Gamecritics.com.