Recent reviews by notrock

Unlike other mecha visual novels, this one is about the characters.

This is a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ epic bacon meme game. Everything reads like it was filtered through a self described redditor. All of the (what I will perhaps overly generously refer to as) jokes are either strained puns, references completely devoid of context, or pointing out that video games do, in fact, employ tropes with sense of trite, smug self-satisfaction. The characters and dialogue game are mired in an air of cynicism, as if to scoff at the very concept of enjoying something at face value. This game is Skynet lending sentience to every mid-2000's gamer webcomic. And outside of the jokes there is nothing else to this game. I might've liked this game when I was 13, and that might be the meanest thing I could possibly say about it.

If you like old-school 2D games at all, you need to pick this up. It's pretty much perfect. Amazing blend of homage and original mechanics. Like seriously, buy it.

If you played Bastion (and who hasn't at this point?) then you'll immediately see that this game is an improvement on the formula. You've got old friends from Bastion returning, including a beautiful art style, the music of Darren Korb and narration from Logan Cunningham, limiters to add some extra challenge (like Bastion's idols), and a variety of weapons and skills. Now, on top of that, you now have more strategic and challenging combat, more varied levels and environments, and a wider variety of enemy types.

It probably won't win over anyone who wasn't a fan of Bastion, but for those who enjoyed it it's both more and better.

The controls make you think of old NES games where you had to build momentum to move and it felt like your character was ice skating. That will make or break your enjoyment of this game, because it feels like the difficulty is based around mastering those kind of controls (which I personally never liked in the first place). In a game like Super Meat Boy or Mega Man, you never feel like you died because of the controls, but I couldn't get over the sense of frustration in 8BitBoy.

The music is fine but nothing memorable, and the level designs are pretty blatant knockoffs of Super Mario World and the Super Mario Land games for Gameboy. Collecting coins? A plant that lets you shoot projectices? Springs? I wonder where you got those original ideas!?

They went for a retro feel with the intro cutscene, but they just look like flat line drawings in done in MS Paint. Also, no one wants to read a wall of text before they play a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ platformer. If you can't tell the story of a platformer through the gameplay, then the game doesn't need one.

The whole thing just feels like a really generic experience. It's certainly not a *bad* game, but all it made me want to do was play Super Mario World instead.

You're gonna ♥♥♥♥ up over and over again and enjoy every second. Think a gothy Super Meat Boy with combat.