[EXPRESSO] Bot Vice NSWDDL | Cyberpop Lane Cabal

Bot Vice’s story is basically a nostalgic mash up of 80 and 90s, with the animesque character designs, the heroine sporting a tank top, attitude and a bionic arm with weapons (heck, the application’s icon is a reference to Alita Battle Angel), as she fights an army of animal themed cyborgs at the orders of the villain, ready to blow up the Nakatomi Building (and quote Terminator, Robocop, AND Beavis And Butthead, because), symbol of the decadent cyberpunk Bot City.

Surprisingly, alongside a nice retrostyled soundtrack you get voice acting for the cutscenes (which could have been shortene), and decent voice acting as well, fitting the whole “self-aware, shameless reference spouting” glut so typical of this sub-set of retro indie games. It comes off as cute, but thankfully Bot Vice it’s also a very tough “gallery shooter” in the style of Cabal and Wild Guns, as in you move around the bottom of the screen, shooting and rolling to avoid enemy fire, collecting special weapons with limited ammo and also using taking cover, which can be destroyed.

And it is tough, quite merciless, even at the beginning, so you’ll need to master moving around, rolling and using cover, as each level is a short but intense battle arena, culminanting in a boss fight. Oddly, the game puts an overall time limit for you to finish all stages in, despite the stages being short and not that numerous, even more as the game doesn’t detract the time spent re-trying stages.

The developer Dya Games managed to do a lot with the “gallery shooter” setup, making for an intense, short but sweet experience, quite challenging and with enough replay value, thanks to its arcade perfect setup, extra difficulties and a bunch of extra missions.

Recommended, even more when it goes on sale.

Knack II [PS4] [REVIEW] | Knack Me Twice

Developed By: Japan Studio

Players: 1-2

The very existence of this game is big “?”, not only because it came out 4 years after the first Knack, bamboozling the gaming community at large, given how widely hated and reviled the first game and its titular protagonist were. Again, it’s worth remembering that the fist Knack was both a critical and a financial failure, and didn’t do worse in revenue because it was a launch title, so there wasn’t much else to play at the time on the newborne console.

In a way, i can understand why someone at Sony did ultimately greenlit this, as an underdog story for this pitiable franchise (and main characters) would have been nice, and proof you can turn thing around with a sequel; it has been done before, after all, so why can’t Knack be redeemed of his sins?

There are many reasons for that, but let’s start from the beginning, meaning the story.

(review based on a playthrough on Normal, for review purposes)

Continua a leggere

[EXPRESSO] Brawl Brothers SNES | OH, Maize!

Played via the SNES – Nintendo Switch Online’s service.

Since i reviewed the last game in the Rushing Beat trilogy (as in, what became of it when Jaleco brought it over as The Peace Keepers), might as well do the second one, or – more appropriately – the western release of Rushing Beat Ran. But since it’s an emulated game, the old code for playing the japanese version works here as well.

And if you go to The Peace Keepers back to Brawl Brothers, you’ll find it hard to believe this one came before, because it’s noticeably the better game, right away it’s obvious, as absurd as it is.

That said, while the gameplay is decent, it apes Final Fight , yes, it also has 4 stages, each being twice as long than usual, long for the sake of it, without the enemy variety to fully sustain it (even for the era)… AND if the pacing wasn’t hampered by the maze-like sections. On paper they should spice things up, make the game less mindless, but they are just obtuse and stupid, as the level design doesn’t comunicate or hints at the “right way”, but its quite happy to still tell you to “GO=>” even when it will lead you into looping into the same ¾ nearly identical corridors.

So 15 minutes in and you will have to either keep trying to access the sewer’s doors in random order or go look up a guide if you wanna save some time. More baffling, this “maze crap”, while it bogs down an other decent – if flawed – game for the time, isn’t even a complete deal breaker, as it applies to just 2 specific sections of the whole game … and it wasn’t even in the Japanese version to begin with.

[EXPRESSO] The Peace Keepers SNES | The Suplexing Complex

Played via the SNES- Nintendo Switch Online’s service.

And i gotta say, despite Nintendo handling this service.. in a totally Nintendo way, sometimes there are surprises, like this forgotten SNES beat em up by Jaleco, actually the third of the Rushing Beat trilogy (which also includes Rival Turf and Brawl Brothers, the latter already released on the service), at least it was originally. I’d say this is a fairly obscure release, as i never even heard of its existence, even by name.

Playing it, i realized why it slipped into obscurity so easily. Just plain ol’ crap in a market – at the time – saturated with tons of titles like that, often better.

It’s hard to say The Peace Keepers is “bad”, as it pretty much plays like Final Fight (aside from a plot that throws movie clichès AND literary references into the pot, with mutants, villains named Iago and places called Ozymandias Island), but it’s not a fast paced affair. Also, the combination of slightly stiff controls and the screen never scrolling properly to the right leads to you dashing into enemies’ fists, not that the game really ever throws tons of foes at you. Which is “good” because each takes more hits than it should to go down in a game like this, making the throws (already a bit too efficient than punches, in a brawler) pretty much mandatory to get anywhere.

Branching paths leading to different bosses and endings are nice but aren’t enough to make the story seems more than a jumbled sequence of scenes. And for some stupid reason the game by default just has the sound effects and ambient noises, i almost went the whole game wondering if the game had no actual music. It does, but you have to change a setting in the options.

[EXPRESSO] Blazing Chrome NSWDDL | Olympus Has Fallen

21XX A.D.

Capitalization of vaguely remembered decades run rampant in the dystopian future where a war against “ze machines” is unfolding. As humanity last stand, the last survivors of a suicide mission, with the main characters designs clearly – “just because we like it” – made to evoke Appleseed’s Dunen and Briareos, you’ll have to attack the enemy HQ in a desperate, last bout of run n gun action.

From the developers of Oniken and Odallus comes a surprisingly good retro 2D run n gun, one that not only evokes the 16 bits days of yore via the usual (but also quite crisp) retro aesthetic, but also because it’s basically Contra III (the weapons will make it even more obvious), with an evasive roll manouver and a Metal Slug-style close quarters knife attack added for good measure. But still, a very good recreation of Contra with enough in it to not just make it a “clone”, made by people that know what to keep from the classics, and where concede to modernity in order to avoid fidelity over quality.

It’s a 6 missions/level affair, but they’re well designed, quite packed and keep the tradition of changing things up with motorcycle sequences, mechsuits, faux-3D shooting sequences, etc. It’s the kind of game that is by design not particularly long, but it’s also very challenging, hard but never soulcrushing difficult, you always feel you can win if you try again, learn and improve. It also gets the arcade type of replayability perfectly, and you’re given various difficuly settings that add or remove “comodities” suck as saving or extra lives. Add in extra playable characters, boss rush mode, and even options for speedrun, and i really can’t recommend this enough.

Shoutout to my buddy Chaosknight69 on Backloggery for recommending this one.

Loved it!

Mega Shark VS Kolossus (2014) [REVIEW] Attack On Titan Shark

In 2013, the first season of the Attack On Titan anime was launched, and effectively made the already successful manga series by Hajime Isayama (started in 2009 on Bessatsu Shonen Magazine) a worlwide phenomen, the anime/manga series that gets big and becomes a sensation even outside of the already invested cultural circles and subcultures, like Death Note did before, resulting in anime/nerd/geek cons flooded with dozens of cosplayers in the guise of the young soldiers and their desperate struggle at gigantomachia in a fantasy Western Europe, for some years to come until the next big series that people won’t shut up about for a time.

While this means bugger all for The Asylum, as they really don’t belong in the “animesphere”, they clearly noticed the popularity of Attack On Titan (or SnK, if you really care), and find an oblique way to chomp at the popularity crumbs of both the anime series, AND to double-dip on the far more popular love letter to mecha anime and kaiju movies, Pacific Rim, which they already “mockbustered” a year later with Atlantic Rim. To really make this the perfect matrioska of creative compromises, they decided to realize this marketing manouver in the shape of a new Mega Shark movie. Continua a leggere “Mega Shark VS Kolossus (2014) [REVIEW] Attack On Titan Shark”

Mega Shark VS Mecha Shark (2012) [REVIEW] | Fins Of Steel

Mega Shark VS Mecha Shark 2012

Of course this doesn’t follow from the last movie, not even the post credits scene implying a kaiju encounter next time… but it wasn’t completely off, because now we have the main monster facing against a robot version of itself, made a classic trope by Godzilla Vs Mecha Godzilla decades ago.

Kinda surprised it took until the third movie in the series for this direction, honestly, but i guess third time is the charm, and very welcome given the series quality so far. Continua a leggere “Mega Shark VS Mecha Shark (2012) [REVIEW] | Fins Of Steel”