Recent reviews by RetroBLM

Modern beat em ups are kind of a crap shoot, I feel. Some of them don't get what makes the genre work at all and fail at design work that was already aced like thirty years ago. Others feel like they need to be modernized with progression systems and open maps, etc., and dilute why I love these games in the process. This one gets it though. Very classically styled, closer to Ninja Baseball Bat Man than anything, which is an excellent thing to remind me of. It's not immune to jank, but I find it very playable nonetheless. Impressive stage and enemy amount and variety while maintaining an arcade mode that's very comfortable to clear in one sitting, thanks to the alternate paths. Really solid. The list of classically styled modern beat em ups worth giving a shot is pretty short, it's always nice to add one to the list.

This delivers exactly the kind of momentum driven movement I'm looking for in a 3D platformer, good job. Lots of understanding what cancels out of what, where momentum carries and where it doesn't, how to get that initial burst of speed. Passes my "can you bunny hop" litmus test and then some. I spend a lot of time looking for exactly this kind of game and I'm thrilled every time I find one.
But also yeah lol, it's really early and needs some time to cook. Thank god for Steam input, I had to use it to invert my sticks and reduce sensitivity by half. Took me forever to figure out how wall running works. You have to use one of your air launcher options then hold lock on. It feels good once you get the hang of it but the people saying "just push buttons, it's not that hard" are wrong. That warrants explanation. Menus are glitchy more often than not, with overlapping menus and buttons that are either unresponsive or otherwise don't do what they're meant to. I've passed through more than a few walls. It's still very fun to play, but like, be warned.
This is very very promising. I'm happy to support the project and I'm excited to play the full release when it's out.

Brilliant. The multi plane run and gun concept is really exciting, and executed on very well here. If you've played a bunch of Contra and Metal Slug and have gotten used to bullet dodging in those, this gives you something new to wrap your head around, with more vectors of attack to worry about. Feels great, looks great, sounds great. I thoroughly enjoyed this game. It's so refreshing to play a game that feels like it wants to actually make me learn stages instead of just checkpointing me before every boss. And that slight randomization on enemy spawns so you still have to stay on your toes replaying stages, oh man. You spoil me. Steel Assault was great too, but this feels like a much more fully realized game, design wise. Extremely excited to see what this developer does next, and excited to eventually dig into the arcade mode here.

alright, the rest of this will be in The Nitpick Zone

There are a couple of qol changes I'd like to see. Hitting the input to swap from normal to fast cursor speed every time I loaded in got old, I wish I could just set the default to fast. And then disable the input to switch. Normal cursor speed just seems bad. Mobility while hanging occasionally seems odd? In particular I'm thinking about how you can't drop from hanging while shooting, instead you jump. I think there were two screens with enemies placed such that you had to act basically the instant you gained control to avoid getting hit, that didn't feel great. Nothing huge, just these little things that occasionally get in the way of the game feeling as smooth as it could.

Weapon upgrades are prohibitively expensive, and like, don't seem that important? I only ever bought one and never bothered again, figuring I could reload and buy one if the going ever got too tough. Got through the rest of my hard mode playthrough just fine. Maybe I'll route around them when I mess with arcade mode? But for anything more casual, they seem too difficult to acquire and not that impactful.

I do think the controls are a bit too busy. I'm thinking about context sensitive inputs in one of this game's clear inspirations, Wild Guns. The jump button would roll if you were firing. Hold attack to fire, rapidly tap to lasso, melee with proximity to a foreground enemy, dynamite throw with proximity to dynamite. It managed a lot of complexity with a fairly small number of buttons. You can see similar things happening in the Genesis run and guns that must have also been an inspiration here, compressing a moveset as complex as Alien Soldier's down to three buttons. This thing uses almost every button on a modern controller and still felt a need to map a toggle to R3. It took a while to stop getting my fingers tangled. I realize a fair bit would need to be reworked to add something like a proximity based melee attack, but, I dunno. It's something this game has me thinking about.

Reminder that my feelings are very positive and all of these nitpicks don't amount to much, lol. If I'm bothering to be this granular then it's a game I care a decent bit about. Good game.

PD_CGT does it again. I was personally disappointed by some of the major action platformer releases this year. This really filled that hole in my heart. Excellent, pure action experience, extremely satisfying to play. Love the art, love the music, love the characters and story. Definitely built around the 1cc experience, and if you're like me then that's all you need to hear. Notably not as brutal as trying to learn, like, a classic arcade game of this type, which will probably be a relief to many players. I've still gotta beat this on the highest difficulty mode myself though. I've only made it about half way as of now. Anyways, enjoy your goty frontrunner.

It's alright. It's a breezy lil action platformer you can beat in a hurry by just using the guillotine boost a lot. It's a jump attack with a massive hitbox that keeps your momentum up and gives you iframes. It dominates the entire experience, makes every other option redundant, and makes the whole game kind of a cakewalk, which is not what I'm looking for in a Ninja Gaiden game. I was kinda hoping hard mode would rectify this annnnd no, it kinda expects you to use it even more? But like, it feels nice. It's pretty. It's fine.

Perfect. Pays tribute to 16 bit action platformers you know and love while also feeling very distinct from its inspirations. Just a super lean, hour long action game experience. A normal playthrough had just enough friction to keep me engaged, going "god this part is *ridiculous*" with a smile on my face. Looking forward to what higher difficulties and arcade mode have in store. Really looking forward to Neon Inferno.

I bought this at launch but for some reason decided two months later, holding a heat pack to my jaw while in horrible pain, was the correct time to play it. I'm not sure why, but, I think I was correct. I don't know what the point of this review is. I'm glad I played this game.

wait lmao this actually plays pretty well. I'm not saying it needs to be on your radar, but like, I got it in a Fanatical bundle on a whim for the equivalent of $3. I expected to play it for 10 mins and move on. I played through the whole thing. It looks like River City Girls (I for sure thought it would be a lazy knockoff of that based on the art and logo) but plays like a mashup of specific stuff from Final Fight and Streets of Rage. The feel is blessedly classic. It's too long for me to wanna pursue repeat playthroughs for score or a 1cc and I'm not super here for the visuals (though they are well executed), but, it's pretty competent. You can do a lot worse.

I heard so much hate over this game for its perfectly nice visuals that I had to actually play the damn thing to learn how it plays. the answer isn't good, folks. it's sticky and slow and monotonous. hope you like spamming dodge to move literally anywhere because the walk speed is comically low. hope you like standing by enemies waiting for vulnerable windows and comboing them like three times to get a kill. I died *one* time in the turbo tunnel due to inattentive boredom and that still took me 8 whole minutes to get through. 8 minutes of bored waiting while the driest version of skyroads you've ever seen in your life happens at you. insane. fire it into the sun.

the animation is really nice though lmao yall are just mean.

Short and sweet, and the price is right. Hazel is Gunvolt 3 lite with an interesting high risk/high reward option in the karma system, and Axel kinda just facerolls through stuff. It all feels pretty good. I'm excited to see more from this developer.