2D Platformers / Metroidvanias

That’s sad. I still haven’t played Bloodstained. It’s on offer all the time, but I remember the Switch port seemingly went through a real rough patch and I have no idea if it was ever brought up to scratch.

Blasphemous 2 getting a big free update and a paid expansion at the end of the month. Never played it and I enjoyed the first until I hate a game breaking bug at the end. Is 2 any good?

I didn't like it nearly as much as the first one. It's more polished as a game, I suppose, with all the metroidvania elements and the way the weapons work into that.

But it's not nearly as weird. It felt like they used up all the cool boss and enemy designs in the first game, and were just left with the scraps.

This isn't really my genre, but gave Ori and Will o the Wisps ago, and then when I looked up it was like 8 hours later .

I can't tell difference between the 120fps 4k version and the 60fps 6k in terms of visuals, but my god it is an incredibly beautiful and artistic game that looks gorgeous on my new LG G4 oled... That HDR!

Iron Meat (PC)

As I said before, if you've tried the demo you know almost the entire game.

So it's a 16-bit pixel art Contra clone. It defies the usual trend of adding more gimmicks and abilities and mechanics and whatnot, instead they went for a no-nonsense straightforward approach. It's even a "step back" from Contra 3 (aka Super Probotector) in that you don't even have bombs. You can run, jump, prone and shoot. That's literally all there is and I must say I like it.

There's one small but significant change in the moveset: during jumps, you can just stop moving sideways by letting go of the d-pad, like in most other games. Not being able to fall down vertically is something that always annoyed me in the Contra series and I'm very happy with this change.

Anyway, the graphics are great and authentic, if it wasn't 16:9 you might actually mistake it for a genuine SNES game. The soundtrack isn't retro though, they went for a full audio metal/industrial soundtrack and I think that was a great decision because it complements the game very well. There's also a retro soundtrack option but for once I think the modern one is much better.

Gameplay is as straightforward as it gets. Just pure, unpretentious, visceral run'n'gun action massacring horror creatures. Actually it's a pure run'n'gun with only side-scrolling on-foot action (with the exception of one vertical level and one lift level), contrary to Contra games with their huge gameplay variety. On the one hand I like this because those are the best parts of those games, on the other hand there's so little variety here that most of the game feels pretty much the same with very similar enemies and attacks. I'm not asking for more stage gimmicks, just saying that a little more enemy variety might have helped to set the levels apart. Weapons are straightforward too in a literal sense, as most of them are just slight variations on shooting forward. It doesn't get as fancy as Contra's spread shot or homing missiles.

Bosses look cool but can in practice be a little underwhelming. They're often big and imposing but usually resort to pretty basic attacks and patterns, which again tend to be repetitive and don't help much in setting them apart from each other. Still they're OK overall.

Difficulty is slightly below average for this type of game, as it seems to be aimed more towards casual retro gamers than to arcade enthusiasts. Hard mode provides some challenge, but it's not nearly as brutal as e.g. Contra 3 on hard. My initial normal playthrough took about 70 minutes, the following hard one took about 5 hours. You get 16 lives per level in normal mode, 30 in easy and 8 in hard, and every time you reach a new level they're refilled. Instead of a save system you just get a level select when you start the game, so it's essentially a password system without the need to type in passwords. This makes it a good game for just a short 10-minute burst of blowing shit up whenever you feel like it.

So it's good fun as an accessible pick-up-and-play run'n'gun with solid action and great audiovisuals, but it's just a little too repetitive for true greatness and longevity. Still a definite thumbs up.

8/10

9 Years of Shadow (Steam)

Currently on -50% sale for €10 (until 13/10), picked it up blindly because I'd never even heard of it but it looked interesting. It's a Castlevania-style metroidvania with amazing vibes but lacking challenge. I'll put a little trailer in spoiler tags to give an impression:



The vibes are top tier, it has a somewhat celestial atmosphere with a fitting soundtrack that's almost jazzy. Just enjoying the vibes and listening to the music had me hooked and greatly helped playing through in two sittings. If you could buy the soundtrack I would, but sadly you can't. I really like the graphics too, even the character portraits that I don't care about in most games. Bonus points for letting you collect "blue notes" for health upgrades.

Gameplay-wise it's classic Igavania world structure and combat, there's a dive kick borrowed from Bloodstained, but there are also elemental forms that allow traversal through different environments, somewhat reminiscent of more recent Shantae games but with significantly faster movement. Unlike in Igavanias there's no levelling system and you only have one weapon, but you get an entire moveset with a few different light, strong, charged, running, and combo attacks, which is great. Most enemies have some weakness which can be exploited once you have the corresponding element, which is conveniently communicated through coloured outlines.

Movement and controls are flawless, super responsive and immediate and they got all the basics right like backdashes and cancelling and all, the devs clearly have a good understanding of this stuff, something I sadly can't say about some other action games I've been playing recently that mess up the fundamentals. This again helped enjoying the game despite its lack of challenge, because at least it feels great.

The unique gimmick of the game is its health system. You get a blue traditional health bar (the "light bar") plus two red health points (both can be upgraded), on hits you lose light, but if you get hit when it's empty you lose a red point, and once you lose all of those you're dead. There's a healing recharge similar to Hollow Knight which allows you to get back to about 75% light, but the crucial difference is that this is free. Hits quickly drain your light, but as long as you can spare 2 seconds without getting hit, healing is infinite. Hitting enemies also recharges light, but only by a small amount.

There's a free-aim ranged attack of the unique "light" element that is required to damage some enemies and bosses and trigger switches, and using it sacrifices a portion of your light bar. This whole system was clearly meant to be a standout feature that introduces strategic management of your health/ammo, but in practice it doesn't amount to much or add anything. Quite the contrary, the unlimited healing further trivialises what's not a very challenging game to begin with.

In boss fights at least you need to find those 2 seconds, but in most of them I found that pretty easy tbh. There was only one exception where I just couldn't find them, and now suddenly I had no healing at all. Thankfully I killed it anyway on 2nd attempt, as usually I found boss patterns relatively quick and easy to learn and not challenging once I understood them. I only died to a boss 3 times or so before the difficulty spike that is the final boss which killed me about 5 times.

Even though the bosses aren't hard, they're still not that bad, their patterns are solid and mildly entertaining, something I can't say about certain other games, cough Bloodstained cough cough. Where the low difficulty hits hardest however is against the mobs between the boss fights. They're mostly the most basic enemies you've already fought in Igavanias, mostly slow with easy patterns that you can see coming from miles away, and the infinite healing becomes a serious issue because even if your light bar is emptied you can just retreat to safely refill at almost any point. It's not as bad as it could be because again, the game just feels good, but it's still disappointing. There's no difficulty setting either, and that combined with unskippable dialogue and (a few) cutscenes doesn't feel like replayability was a major concern.

It's a shame because in some regards like atmosphere, soundtrack, controls and moveset this game had top tier potential. Still, despite the gameplay shortcomings I cherish the experience for the amazing vibes.

Playthrough time: 7 hours according to game, 10 hours according to Steam

7.5/10


Edit: I saw a "professional" reviewer complaining about severe technical issues, but not once in video or written form did he mention what platform he was on. I didn't have technical issues on PC, but a heads up if you're considering getting this on another platform.

Valfaris was amazing. And it was too short.

9 Years of Shadow looks like another game cribbing from Blasphemous' art style

Bought and finished Pepper Grinder at the weekend having never heard anything about it before but saw some gameplay that looked cool

It is cool. You'll spend most of your time digging through stuff and jumping across gaps into more stuff, which is something a bit different to your usual platformer. It also introduces a hookshot which works pretty well, though I did find the controls a bit finicky. It's best to not over think it and do it by feel- see a hookshot point, go for it, it'll be fine. It's generally not very difficult- the checkpoints aren't too far between and falling into the abyss just puts you back where you fell from with the loss of a pip of health. The bosses are nails though, especially the last one. Took me a lot of attempts and was only mildly frustrating, requiring a break before beating him. But I did and it was good

There's not much in the way of a story (your treasure is stolen and you want it back- fair) but there's some stuff going on through the stages that give the world and enemies some character. It does build up to a satisfying conclusion with the little green bastards. It's short, just 4 worlds with a few stages in each. Each stage has some some hidden coins to find that adds a bit of extra playtime/replay value (I found a lot of them on my first run through each stage) but it took me about 5 hours to get everything. There's also time trials if you're into that- the gameplay does lends itself to learning the stages so you can run through them as quickly as possible

The soundtrack is pretty chill. This track is cool

NO U

You have your own incorrect truths.

Oh man. That sounds excellent on paper. Buster Keaton is one of my favourite actor/performers ever. I don’t know why, but I never visualised his framing of shots as comparable to video games, but it obviously is.

After beating all three of the Dominus collection, I think Dawn of Sorrow might actually be my least favourite of them. Which is pretty mental, because I really do like that game! It's just that Order of Ecclesia is sooooooooo good. And Portrait is pretty great for an Igavania too.

For repeat playthroughs, best of all there's a "speedrun mode" that disables all cutscenes and dialogue and even speeds up shopping. That's the best possible solution, every game should have it.

A core part of why this game gives you so many great options has to be how amazingly the dev listens to feedback. I'd been in their discord for a few weeks, saw someone requesting UI feedback on which loadout you're using and bam one week later that was in the next update.

2D Sekiro with cats? I need rob to test it