[EXPRESSO] Pokemon Café Mix iOS | Got Milc?

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Another Pokemon puzzle game, another free-to-play (or more correctly, “free-to-start”, as Nintendo themselves likes to call these games) for mobile and Switch, this time with a cutesy pastel cafè aesthetic, as you manage a Pokemon cafè, operated by and for Pokemon, alongside a human girl, who acts as a general assistant-tutorial figure.

This is done via puzzle challenges, thankfully not of the “match 3” kind (we already had plenty of those with a Pokemon license), nor or the Panel The Pon/Puzzle League variety, but in turn based grid-less form, with the objective of linking together chains of pokemons, in order to activate an ability, destroy special blocks, or because of a stage requiring a certain quota of Pokemon pieces/icons to be matched.

Each pokemon has a specific ability, a specialization for a certain kind of dish (drinks, sandwiches, desserts, etc.), and as you progress you unlock more critters but also more recipes and new expansions for the cafè, which in turn introduce new elements and stage objectives, with some random chances of increasing the friendship level with a certain pokemon, who will join the staff.

The gameplay is decent, but the more free-form, grid-less style of level design makes it too reliant on abilities and consumable objects, a bit too helpful in this case, especially because you can also activate them during the stage, not just before. All to push you into buying the premium currency, which happens a bit too fast, it won’t take long to realize so with the limited energy system, timers and the extra turns costing a lot of “gems”.

While i’ve seen worse monetization schemes and freemium economies, there’s also the fact i’ve seen and played way better puzzles game. This is a very cute distraction (with a tad manipulative freemium economy), but not much else.

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[EXPRESSO] Ninja-Kid NSWDDL | Ninja In The Hood

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Yeah, why, not, with sales on Neo Geo and arcade titles on the Switch eShop, let’s talk about arcade platformer Ninja-Kid, developed by UPL and now emulated by Hamster, who also brought to Switch and PS4 many arcade classics, including In The Hunt.

And no, this isn’t the american version of that NES GeGeGe No Kitaro game, also called Ninja Kid (without hyphen) for the NA release.

This one isn’t exactly what i would call a “classic”, and i’m honestly glad i bought it on sale. Not because the game itself it’s bad, it’s just that the old god Chronos hasn’t been too kind on this action platformer from 1984, that feels a bit like Ice Climbers (while pre-dating the Nintendo game by 1 year), due to how you have to move to jump or double jump, otherwise you’ll drop to the platform below.

It’s a simple game where you can jump to stun enemies, throw shurikens to defeat them, move upwards the mountain/castle/stage and once you get rid of all the foes, you can proceed to the next level.

There are three backgrounds/stages (and a bonus stage if you collect “three strange balls” without dying), but while enemies become more varied and more dangerous each level, there isn’t any end, it just loops the levels/background and keeps going, but that’s basically it. There is some strategy with approaching the enemies, but still, there’s not much to it, nor there was supposed to be more to it, as this was meant to be played in an arcade in 10 minutes burst at max.

That said, it’s a fun arcade oldie, once you get around the responsive but odd jump controls, and there’s satisfaction if you wanna go for the high scores, with the usual extra modes found in Hamster arcade re-releases.

Decent!

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[EXPRESSO] Coffee Crisis NSWDDL | Bronco Blend

Coffee Crisis NSWDDL

I’m doing an Expresso review of this one because it doesn’t deserve a full review.

Coffee Crisis is retro brawler/beat em up inspired by 16-bit classics, as so proudly says in the marketing and description, and sports all the mandatory “indie quirks”, from mediodre-decent pixel graphics, a throwaway story so we can weaponize it as “joke” despite being a lazy and unfunny mish mash of overdone references and cringey exchanges regardless, so bad the writers should tar themselves, but clearly no one is vaguely ashamed.

I mean, we have to shoehorne appearences from Youtubers AlphaOmegaSin and MetalJesusRock (and somehow the legendary band Nile), need something to bait Twitch viewers in, clearly the plot about baristas fighting aliens that want to steal our heavy metal isn’t enough random “for the lulz” by itself.
Thankfully you can skip dialogues by pressing B.

Gameplay wise, it’s so faithful to its ispirations it’s downright obtuse, a prime example of not understanding the very genre you’re trying to serenade, not evolving or improving the combat system, and even badly aping them, with finnicky hit detection making most of the extra weapon useless, blows that don’t stop enemies so they power through your attacks, when they don’t snipe you with projectiles from outside the screen. Most of the difficulty is obtained via cheap bullshit, and it’s unbalanced as well, with boss fights that are usually piss easy and just annoying.

Its main selling point, the random modifiers, are such a liability the game improves when you deactivate them. Sadly you can’t turn off or ignore the password system as the sole mean to continue, and the game also quickly outstay its welcome, continuing on and on instead of ending.

At least the music is decent-good… but 30 years later, Bad Dudes it’s a way better game.

Still.

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