52 IN 52: Alien Splatter Redux cleared

[swordianmaster]

I'm not sure if that's "splatter" as a person, one who splats, or "splatter" as a thing, the shape of a splat. I do know that it's "redux" because this is a for-sale upgrade of a Newgrounds game.

I also know I spent $.50 on it, on sale (half off from the exhorbitant price of a dollar), and don't really regret that.

That's not to say there's nothing to regret, but in the sake of avoiding being overly negative for something I paid less for than a candy bar, let's get the good out of the way first.

The good, for what it's worth, is really damn good. ASR is a retro throwback game, a run-and-gun in the vein of things like Ninja Gaiden or Kabuki Quantum Fighter. (Or Contra, but it's far more forgiving than that.) While the incredibly simple palette can be hard to adjust to (if you're not used to 8-bit stylizations), it's remarkably intuitive - outside of powerups, things are color-coded. Your guy is green, bad guys (that is to say, hurty things you can shoot to death) are orange-purple, hazards (hurty things you can't hurt and have to avoid) are orange-yellow.

Most notably, the game's level design is phenomenal for a game like this. Enemy and platform placement is generally tough-but-fair - no jumps feel unclearable, if you take your time you won't get murdered violently, and the controls and hitboxes are surprisingly tight and accurate.

....and then I got to stage 6 out of 7.

Stage 6 has Quick Man lasers. Not just the lasers, they just straight up lifted the entire bullshit Quick Man run out of Mega Man 2. Twice. This completely sucked out any enjoyment I had of the game nearly instantly and turned it into a screaming match. Not helping matters: You lose any of your powerups when you die, and the boss of this stage is right after the second one of these death-falls.

There's a segment in the final stage (that legitimately looks like it stole the tileset from Contra's final stage) that is equally stressful, involving a moving crusher-cieling (skillfully disguised as alien tentacles), but in this case you can at least take your time in between crush cycles, and the only hard part is making sure that you can get from point A to point B in enough time. It's not rote memorization, much more about reflexes.

For all its flaws, I enjoyed 90% of the game. I even got a chuckle out of the deliberately Zero Winged up intro sequence. And it's a dollar not on sale. I've bought much, much worse games for a dollar.

Comments

[xyzzysqrl]

...well crap, this looks powerfully decent and if it's one and a half bullshit levels out of 7 that's not actually a bad ratio...

I'll keep an eye on this one.

[swordianmaster]

Technically 8, but the last one is a post-credits extra stage that deliberately goes Gameboy aesthetic instead of NES aesthetic.

Goddamn did Stage 6 get under my skin, though. At least it was kind enough to let me continue from that stage whenever I (repeatedly) game-overed. Old NES games aren't typically that nice to you.

Also, if you've played Ninja Gaiden (...or Contra, or Castlevania, or any NES-era platformer) then you know full well that there is one weapon powerup that is stupidly busted and everything else is trash. I'll save you the guesswork: it's the boomerang scythe thing.

[kjorteo]

My experience with NES-era Castlevania tells me that not only is there one weapon powerup that is stupidly busted and everything else is trash, but that the best one is indeed the cross boomerang scythe thing. So, this checks out.

Of course, in the Tiger LCD handheld version of Ninja Gaiden II, despite that being the origin of the "The bonus is the Ninja Wheel!" quote I sometimes use as subtitles for blog profiles and such, the best power is Shadow Imaging. And in 8-Eyes it was the freezy ball, but generally people don't talk about 8-Eyes.

But... yeah. NES Castlevania's cross-erangs were the best.

[swordianmaster]

but generally people don't talk about 8-Eyes.

This is one of those things that I try to bring up whenever possible, and I'm sure I have before, but my very first games when I got my own NES were Crystalis... and 8-Eyes.

I remember Crystalis fondly. I never want to touch 8-Eyes again.

who the hell thought naming your final stage boss rush "The House of Ruth" was a good idea seriously what the fuck you guys

[kjorteo]

I love the idea behind 8-Eyes so much. I mean... well, okay, yes, the idea behind 8-Eyes is "let's blatantly rip off Castlevania even down to those infuriating stairs" but some of the little tweaks they made were nice, and others were at least nice conceptually if not in execution. The freezy ball is a cool subweapon. The falconry aspect, including two player co-op if someone wants to control the falcon, sounds amazing on paper until it turns out the falcon's controls are... limited (even when you have an entire second player/controller for them) and every falcon puzzle in the game is the exact same "Hmm, there's a switch over there but the door is over here" exercise.

Oh, except for finding hidden stuff in the walls, I guess. Which, again, I actually really like "Red is to the left of Blue; Green is to the right of Red" logic puzzles, but not when you can get through the entire game without enough clues for it to be possible to solve them because you weren't aware you were supposed to be looking for them, and rubbing your bird against every brick in every room in every stage just in case to find them all, especially with those controls, is an exercise in pain.

And the "better sword" system is complete bullshit.

But, you know, other than that!

... It had good music at least. *cough* But yeah, it's a basic premise for a game that could be amazing if some talented indie dev wanted to start over and make a better falconry-vania without all the issues 8-Eyes ended up having.

[xyzzysqrl]

A: It appears to be the Glaive from KULL.
B: This game is SUNSOFT as HELL. Like, the first thing I thought of was NES Batman, and ... well, and then Vice: Project Doom next. Like if the two things were combined.