Bacon Man: An Adventure

[h1]Bacon Man: An Adventure[/h1] Another successful Kickstarter with another eager wait during the development process, [i]Bacon Man[/i] generated a good amount of hype with its outlandish premise and titular main character, off-the-wall visuals, and late 90's inspired platforming action. With an initial release date in December of last year, the game has received a bit of a pushback in order to polish up the experience and fans have been more than eager to get a taste of the pork-based adventure in full. It turns out it's been worth the wait, as the game ended up as entertaining, charming, and polished as you could want it. [i]Bacon Man[/i] is easily one of the stranger if not more unique video game platformer heroes to appear since probably [i]Earthworm Jim[/i]. An anthropomorphic... strip of bacon? Or maybe he's like Earthworm Jim and is just a strip of bacon in a humanoid suit. Either way, he's pretty weird. He has a lot of friends that seem to be pigs, and they don't seem to really mind that he's them except cooked which is kinda weird too but they seem to like each other anyway. His other friends include some kind of feta cheese samurai, a freaky grizzled and feral ninja girl of some kind, and a really overweight Samurai Pizza Cat lady that looks like she ate a bit too much pizza named Lard Lass. You'll even befriend a boar dude named Excaliboar who for some reason isn't entirely down with your pork chomping antics, the heathen. The whole thing shows an incredible deal of imagination in its different eccentric and impressive environments of which there are seven, each with a selection of various well-designed and eye-opening levels of alternating paths, secret treasures and difficult bosses just as any 90's kid would remember them. [h1]Visuals/Audio[/h1] Right off the bat [i]Bacon Man[/i] has a very 90's Saturday Morning Cartoon feel about it, from the catchy title-screen and the appearance of the zany food-oriented cast of characters. It also has a very cheeky "anime" feel to it with the subtitle of the game being in katakana, and the opening song having little bits of what sounds like the plucking of Koto giving the game a strangely "Far-Eastern" feel to it. From the busty "Melon Maiden" who loads up your save files and greets you at the pub to the demonic meat creature that seems to be the boss dubbed simply the Pork King the character designs are funny and clever, and sure maybe a little grotesque and bizarre. As you get into the adventure the tone of the soundtrack becomes more serious, orchestral, and adventurous while the visuals on enemies and setpieces remain as out-there as usual. Backgrounds consistently grow in quality and detail as you progress through the game, and are genuinely stunning pieces of eye-candy as far as sidescrollers go. Through icy frozen mountains with vibrant caves of pulsating organics and geysers in the background spewing clouds of flowing purple smoke, to the molten red volcanoes of trecherous and unpassable terrain it's all done in an incredibly vibrant and modern yet somehow cartoon-y and nostalgic way. [h1]Gameplay[/h1] You start out learning to combo, uppercut, and downward smash enemies with your fists and soon enough earn access to the trusty toaster gun with its slowly recharging shots. The bodies of knocked out enemies can be flung into each other for damage, or thrown onto water and turned into traversable blocks. Combat is telegraphed well into actual exploration and enemies can be uppercutted and comboed across gaps or smashed from above for a little bit of extra air. The combat becomes hectic and satisfying within only a couple levels, with enemies attacking you from both sides both close and long ranged forcing you to time your shields, conserve your ammo, and strike with the right rhythm to not get hit. It takes some practice to not get pummeled, but once you've got it down and the combos are flying with the bullets it feels good. Really good. Each level has multiple directions you can venture out into and the less conventional seeming path will always be the harder one. Heavy but creative platforming sections make up a good deal of most of these paths, interspersed with plenty of enemies coming in from every direction to block, punch, and shoot. No matter what your path, levels generally end in a tough and chaotic and usually pretty damn fun boss fight of which many being reminiscent of the legendary [i]Mega Man[/i] bosses. There are four different bizarre and mostly food-related characters to choose from with unique traits and abilities. They all vary in speed, health, power meter and can of course each have their own individual experience and character level, which adds a lot of replay value and incentive to go back with new characters you want to strengthen. As if any extra incentive is needed to go back, with such eye-catching and vibrant stages and the many paths they hold. Each 'Ascension' grants you a choice of powering up your health or your power, and finding the important Wards strewn about levels or from enemies and bosses will be what grant you new skills and passives. While a mostly fun and accessible yet brutal platforming romp, the game can be quite challenging in true retro tradition. With lots of high-health bosses that will test your reflexes and attacks that will require perfect timing of the shielding mechanic, and plenty of pixel-perfect jumping sections that will insta-kill you on failure this is still a difficult if not overall enjoyable sidescroller that will push you in the same way the classics of the 90's did. The actual platforming can be a tad frustrating due to a bit of floatiness while controlling Bacon Man in the air, which could be a side-effect of having to use the analog stick when I'm used to using a D-pad for platformers. Many times while trying to aim my landing on another jump pad to traverse the rows of jump pads leading to the next ledge I would miss my target by just a hair, and no matter how precisely I aimed Bacon Man would often inch just enough to one side to overshoot the target. Admittedly this is true of the 90's platforming classics this seems to be a nod towards, and if you're here for the nostalgic value everything you remember is here for better or for worse. [h1]Conclusion[/h1] [i]Bacon Man[/i] just might be that perfect alternative for those who were hyped for [i]Cuphead[/i]'s cartoonish and visually impressive take on the speed-running platformer genre, but were turned away by the oppressive difficulty. It has actually long and satisfying platforming and beat'emup sections with just as impressive massive and tricky bosses, with just as animated and memorable a style to it while creating a whole comedic vibe of its own. It even has local co-op for those couch gaming sessions with a friend. It's an oddly gorgeous game with some wacky as hell creative food-based setpieces and backgrounds, it's entirely accessible and easy to play on the surface while offering plenty of techniques to master and secrets to sidetrack yourself with for the more old school players. Visually you can see some serious heart and soul has been poured into the different stage and humorous character designs as well as how consistently each new stage blows you away in its massive, detailed, and polished appearance. For the stellar production quality alone, [i]Bacon Man: An Adventure[/i] is more than worth the asking price. [i]This review made possible through the consideration of [url=http://store.steampowered.com/curator/11739878-ReviewExperts/]Review Experts(REXnetwork)[/url] and the developer.[/i]

lard lass is hot

If you like hard 2D platformers, this is for you. Gameplay is solid and continually improves over time with new abilities you unlock along the way. Each character has their own variations of HP & Power bars that fit with their design, similar to Super Mario Bros 2/Advance. Bacon Man is your all around character, Lard Lass is your health sponge, Feta is your powerhouse and Pan is your ranged/defensive character. What's neat is that you can improve each characters HP & Power stats through ascending (leveling up) at a shop once your experience bar is full from all the enemies you defeat in your adventure. This system allows you to make up for character shortcomings and gives you a sense of progression as you make your way through increasingly difficult levels. In addition, by finding or purchasing relics and equipping them you can boost certain abilities such as longer guard time, a treasure locator, etc. You get currency to buy relics from defeating enemies & finding treasures hidden throughout each level, so even if your experience bar isn't full it's wise to go to a shop anyways to further improve your character. As you see from the trailers, Bacon Man has a unique visual flair to it. The best way I can describe it is if cell-shading and claymation had a baby with an appetite for food. Unreal Engine 4 makes the food-based enviorments stick out, making each world you visit memorable. Along the way you meet new characters (also based on food) that fit with the world they inhabit. Storywise, the game takes a more silly approach with the occasional 4th wall breaks. You'll find yourself laughing at a few jokes hidden in some of the dialogue. If you find that the story isn't your taste though, you can usually skip it on the first bubble of dialogue to jump straight into action. In terms of replayability, there's a lot to do. Each main level has secrets to find, and finding those secrets give you a variety of things such as cool artwork & new skins for the characters. After beating a level and going back to it you'll find a clock at the start, and when touched these clocks put a convenient timer on the top of the screen that stops when you complete the level (perfect for speed runners). I wouldn't be surprised to see this game being played someday on SGDQ/AGDQ someday with how fun it is to speedrun. Lastly, let's talk about music & sound. The music fits with the levels atmosphere, and the catchy main menu music has constantly got stuck in my head. Sound effects are charming from time to time, but they can get a little repetitive (especially if you die a lot). Thankfully, you can turn these down or off and it doesn't impact the game too much. Oh, and did I mention there was splitscreen coop play? :D Overall, I enjoyed my experience with this game. For a genre that's getting increasingly common, everything about this game makes it stand out from the rest. Give it a shot, especially if you're a speedrunner.

I've been following this game from the very beginning and am loving everything about it so far. The music is outstanding, the comedy is on point and it's got a great combination of challenge and reward without punishing you too hard like some games in this genre. I do wish it had better instructions for us keyboard users but it didn't take long to figure things out.

Although I'm having an astounding amount of difficulty with the game ( it is hard for me ) I still have to give it a recommendation. The game is good and the devs have been very responsive. I just need to get better.

Disclaimer: I really wish Steam had a neutral review option. I don't want to be harsh Cute 2D platformer with 3d graphics. It's very retro, taking a lot of inspiration from late 90s early 2000s games. The artwork and level themes feel unique, and the chacters are different enough to feel replayable. The sound track is excellent- combining the retro feel with modern quality. Plus it's actually finished. My playlist lately has been entirely early-access and Paradox games so this is notable to me. Unfortunately, the game also took the stupid checkpoints from those retro games. Forcing players to replay the same frustrating section for each new attempt at an inst-kill obstacle isn't fun and isn't real difficulty. There are multiple sections like this- just enough simple puzzles and just enough faffing about to make the game a chore. When I got to a point where I think a checkpoint had outright been removed for the lols*, I rage quit. The game also makes no attempt to be playable with a keyboard. It's possible, but there's no rebinding and no prompts re: which keys correspond to what without a lot of trial and error. If you're not using a controller, definitely don't buy this game. The writing is also a bit lackluster, falling back on the "look how bad this dialogue is" joke far too often to be funny and the bosses take a bit long to kill to be fun, but at this point I'm just picking holes. If you enjoyed platformers back in the day and could repeat the same section a dozen times without wanting to smash your controller, this might be the game for you. If you're not a masochist, play something else. *In case a dev reads this- it's the bit after the excaliboar fight. You go through the long air vent, kill two monsters, cling a wall above a vent then dash onto another wall, shoot a guy, drop down, do a shooty puzzle with risy and fally bits, dash through another guy, do a shooty puzzle in a very confined spike-lava area (which killed me a lot- so do the above again a few dozen times), kill the pointy hatted guy, then have to jump on a floating thingy. There's a long corridor and you change the type of challenge the player is facing. And the fact that I have it memorised should show how many times I had to do the damn thing.

This game is amazing. If you enjoyed platforming games like Mega Man games, Donkey Kong Country, Rayman, Earthworm Jim, etc. - you will enjoy Bacon Man. This game has all the right things to create a great platforming game - such as challenge, awesome music, tough jumps, hidden chests, and humor. There are epic battles scattered throughout this game...such as against Excaliboar and Feta. If you'd enjoy a nice challenge the first time through, face Feta "blind". He really is a great "boss" battle and is very rewarding once you best him at the end of the Colocheeseum. Boss battles aside, the re-attempts you may face in a level will most likely be due to rushing through a situation before thinking, rather than the controls being the issue. The controls handle nicely. I purchased this game release, and my goodness, it has it been updated nearly each time I have logged into Steam - even twice or so in the same day! The developers definitely show they care with this awesome, little gem. You can tell these folks put a lot of effort (and continuing effort) into making this a better game than it already is. If you grew up playing games in the 80s and throughout the 90s, give Bacon Man a try!

I had the opportunity to play early versions of this game and have always been blown away with the level of detail and quality these guys bring to this game. I think their goal was to simulate how you might feel if you ate ten pounds of bacon and they nailed it! Be warned, you will likely sweat a lot, your chest will tighten, and your left arm will tingle a bit but that’s what you expect from a tougher than nails game. I give this 10 out of 10 and, assuming I keep a defibrillator nearby, can’t wait to play all the way through this one!

Bacon Man: An Adventure in good and bad upsets The "too lazy to read the rest of this summary" summary: The gameplay is generally good and challenge is frustrating but rewarding, but you will encounter numerous mostly minor bugs. Bacon Man is a platformer that feels like it's got some heart behind parts of it's construction, but it's missing a very much needed polish and an extra run from the Q&A department. It's clearly harkening back to the strange world and hubris of Earthworm Jim, where you have a comical world of cartoonish characters with some generally light hearted writing behind it that I'm sure younger players would enjoy, slapstick a common occurance during most cutscenes. The humour however is slanted slightly by the fact that the main characters don't really emote outside of body gestures, faces are plastered on, yet you have a character in the form of "The Pork King" who despite being a way simpler design than the protagonists comes off as a much more expressive character in his animations. This tends to apply to many of the side-characters that I have seen so far, who are put on screen next to the protagonist group and tend to be more interesting to watch. Gameplay is the game's true strong point however, offering up well designed levels that actually offer up a challenge to what is advertised on the store page. Death can come swiftly and sometimes you need to plan out how to actually proceed ahead through an area. Using enemies as kicking posts to guide yourself through the air, dashing off walls into double jumps into air dashes to navigate around to a safe patch not covered in spikes, firing off shots to lure out charging crushing/spiked sentient blocks, the environment is the meat of this game. While most levels are mainly linear, there are some levels with branching pathways that tend for you to go down one to unlock another. Treasure Chests tend to be scattered across levels, with money (YUMS), equipment and art to be looted. While there is combat, it is rather basic with a melee and ranged attacks (also guarding), while ranged attacks can be customized rather heavily with equipment, your melee is going to be a rather short spammable beatdown of sorts. While all enemies can be beaten till they explode, most smaller enemies can be beaten to near death and then picked up, to be used as a thrown weapon or to be sacrificed into the nearest water hazard to create a platform upon it. You earn experience and YUMS to be spent at shops to upgrade yourself. As entertaining as the core game is, it is held back by some mildly irritating bugs. So far I've experienced audio glitches, strange blurry textures on certain objects in the environment as if they didn't load in properlry, died to random floor geometry on a forced scrolling level, had one boss that got stuck in an attack animation loop and another just suddenly die before I ever landed the last necessary hit. Nothing I've seen has stopped my playthrough outright, but when it unfortunately happens in tandem it really does lower the enjoyment of everything. I really hope this game gets some much needed patching, there's a diamond in the rough here and it's just needs to be cleaned up a bit.

Bacon Man is a good throwback to 2D classics. The plot isn't hammy, its visuals shine with unique glaze, and the guts of the game hint at compelling platforming action. Technical issues might turn the heat down, but the final product is still pretty delicious - and much meatier than Super Meat Boy.  Read more here: http://gameranx.com/features/id/141839/article/bacon-man-an-adventure-impressions-sizzling-porky-goodness/