Best Buds vs Bad Guys

Best Buds vs Bad Guys, otherwise known as Best Buds in your Steam library, is a retro-inspired run & gun game. The problem with being retro inspired is being able to differentiate what makes those games fun and what made them a pain. I welcome games deciding to be challenging, but having design decisions that serve only to annoy people or make the game seem unfair doesn’t do much for my enjoyment. It’s a heavily flawed game with the inclusion of numerous stability issues which is a shame since it also has good ideas in it. The gameplay involves running, gunning, and a good amount of platforming. You also have to find three pieces of the EXIT before engaging the boss to collect the T and end the level. Sometimes the locations for finding the three pieces are a bit obfuscated and can be non-linear to its detriment. I’ve even run into a visual clue that blended with the background for me with the cracked stairs near the beginning of the level that you’re supposed to remember to backtrack to since you need to drop dynamite on it in order to progress. The platforming is extremely basic. You can find items that will grant a double jump or a super jump and those only last for the stage instead of being permanent upgrades. The movement items will turn off if you enter the item menu, if you enter a new area, or for no reason on rare occasions. Those types of deaths are really unwelcome. It’s also quite the feeling to become used to a double jump only to not have it in other stages or having to reacquire if restarting a level. Instead, you’ll be regularly depending on your jump and running jump. In terms of obstacles, there are spikes, invisible blocks, pits, ladders, moving platforms, a couple blind jumps, and other hazards. Don’t expect an interesting movement kit. The hitboxes for the traps and the collision with the environment are not done well at all. They interfere with movement and cause deaths or head bumps due to platforms and traps having hitboxes in the shape of hard rectangle. They tend not to match the objects in question which makes the movement feel very clunky or unresponsive at times. I’ve died by touching the machine part of a laser trap instead of the beam. Most of the traps I’ve come across up behaved poorly until the seventh stage where some of them didn’t just outright kill you by being near. Instead, they’d blend in with the background due to poor color choices and turn on and off even quicker than usually. The best parts of this game are the different guns and the boss fights. The starting weapon isn’t that great and I’m glad whenever I come across a new weapon or an old favorite. You store each one you find in a level too and can equip it at will when you bring up the item menu. That’s also the same menu where you can use your support items such as health potions, grenades, or a shield. I really like this kind of feature that lets you hoard whatever you find instead of having a hard restriction. The boss fights are pretty fun, especially when you bring in special weapons to the fight. They provide fights that let you use your whole inventory with abandon. One of the worst levels in the game in terms of level design has to be Ancient Castle. It features dozens of different instant death spike traps with rectangular hitboxes that don’t match what’s being animated. Some of the spikes don’t even have any indicators of their presence which I found out by dying. They just pop up from the ground and you have to wait and then memorize their location as you slowly make your way around them. The whole level was a drag due to that kind of design. Death followed even from approaching the spikes from the side. Even climbing the ladder had spikes which made it very slow going. It was a level that represented a cocktail of boredom and frustration. It required many retries. The Toybox level turns into a masochistic instant death trap fest with enemies shooting you at the same time. Another problem I noticed were the obnoxious enemy spawns. They frequently come into existence off screen and then start their attack. When they have guns, prepare for shots coming from the sides. The flying ones that prefer charging at you were also really annoying to deal with and frequently resulted in taking damage. It just felt cheap. I prefer the design philosophy of difficult, but fair. Regrettably the developer only applied it to the boss fights in this game. Some other issues I had were explosions or certain gun effects completely masking enemy projectiles and the sound design. The projectile problem should be easy enough to explain. It’s hard to dodge what you cannot see, making the task of staying alive very difficult. The sound design issue comes in a couple different flavors. The first one is the lack of sound in the environment. Traps will spring up or fall down instantly without a whisper. The environmental clues of their presence can be a nuisance to notice, especially if corpses have been piling up. They have no sound cues or impact noises. The other annoying aspect of the sound design is how some enemies are very loud and have an annoying sound that doesn’t stop until you kill them. Just think of really grating retro sound on a relatively tough to kill enemy. Those two issues cause the experience to feel empty or aggravating. There are still more issues to cover. The respawning platforms that crumble under your feet are frequently buggy and cause delays. They only come back to life based on proximity versus a timer which can cause problems as you try and jump around to make them respawn. The spring platforms for some reason allow you to pass through them when jumping on them sometimes which leads to fatal errors. You’re supposed to bounce off of them. They can also move for some reason when you’re bouncing on top of them. A continue option would have been great for this game. There isn’t one present, so losing all your lives means starting over completely. Most of the lives I’ve lost have been to those instant death traps. I’ve seen the beginning of levels many times. The gunfire can also push your character back, resulting in a large amount of unintended deaths when fighting in dangerous areas filled with instant death traps. The stability issues are serious with this game. Every time I complete a level, the game freezes and requires a restart. Sometimes it’ll just crash to desktop. The stability issues alone are enough to make me caution people interested in making a purchase. I’d make a very smart use of your Steam Refund window with this title since the performance problems could very well make it not worth your time. It’s extremely annoying to have to relaunch the game so many times during a play session. I’m just glad it was able to save my progress when it would freeze after completing a stage. I also found myself becoming frozen on a door transition for up to a minute. The game gives off the impression that it’s being held together with hope and prayer. Unfortunately, the fun aspects of this game – boss fights and gun variety – are not enough to overcome the number of problems I had with the game. It’ll need more stability updates and then some tuning and tweaking to make the game a more consistent and fun experience. As it is now, the game might not be in a condition that’s good enough for purchase. I see the potential, but it’s buried underneath everything else. I couldn’t even see the entire game due to the severity of all the issues combined. I had to seriously push myself to complete eight out of eleven stages and seeing most of the ninth. - Best Buds vs Bad Guys was provided to me by https://pcgamesnnews.wordpress.com/ for review and you can hit them up for more video game reviews or previews.

Hi! My name's Sasha Zenko. I'm from Belarus. I am making hardcore letsplay videos handsfree (using only my chin). I have a program that allows me to assign keyboard controls to mouse movements. I play your game. It's very good. I like it. Watch me playing your game without hands here: https://youtu.be/5vxVpfVRxbs

- Edited - After 30 or so hours played I've updated gameplay paragraph below. There aren't many reviews for this game yet, so I thought I'd share my position if you're on the fence about buying this. I highly recommend this game for arcade side scroller shooter fans, also to any people wanting a very charming game. This game is full of the type of charm that proudly reminds people that videogames are a fun medium. The type of game that wants you to laugh, smile and enjoy its pixel art as a whole package, and doesn't shy away from being exactly what it is. The dedication by the developers is evident - they have put together a joyful combo of fun and great pixel art. Because charm is somewhat abstract here are some other points. The story is simple, to the point and (again) charming. It wears its heart on its sleeve and that's awesome. The idea of father and son demolishing everything together is novel and I've never seen a similar idea before. It kind of breaks a fourth wall into the developer's minds while you're playing. Gameplay is mostly simple, but deep if you want it to be. Run. Jump. Shoot larger than life collectible weapons. Shooting is like contra. Up and diagonal, left and right. Super fun. However hidden depth found in some strategy and planning - especially in latter half of game. Weapon management and a slow measured approach is required. If you play on medium or hard - you are not going to want to be careless with your approach - otherwise lose massive health and 'game over' will be upon you in no time. Control of best buds is really good on the run and in air. Good high jump, with good feeling of flight but solid control in air for landing on platforms. I think Super Icon deliver a superb feeling of movement in their 2d platformers with tight control. Explore 11 extensive stand alone levels that deviate in different paths full of pickups. Levels are pretty big! A little puzzle orientated to find everything which encourages you to explore the whole landscape. Difficulty is really well done. 3 options to start off with, something for everyone. The developers are active in the discussions here on steam, asking for bugs etc. A few bugs have been identified but nothing game breaking and updates are already coming. This is a very very small team and its awesome to see their commitment to the game. Lastly I just really like the game. I loved life of pixel - also by this developer. Thanks Super Icon for making this! It's awesome to see the game out in the world! Definitely consider picking this up to support a really cool developer.

Еще одна всеми незамеченная годнота.

Overall, it's a smooth-looking and reasonably competent action game with platforming elements and it can be a quite difficult. I love the design overall, but it just doesn't feel very polished with overly clunky controls and issues with the Linux version. Right now I won't recommend it, but I will try it again once it has some more patches to smooth it out. Full review: https://www.gamingonlinux.com/articles/best-buds-vs-bad-guys-the-retro-indie-action-platformer-released-for-linux.8812/

This is one of many terrible contra clones on steam. I am a sucker for these kinds of games so when I saw best buds it looked like the kind of game that I should love, but once you start playing you realize all the flaws. -Bad controls, unresponsive and aiming is awkward, makes firefights far more difficult than they should be, this is not a problem that I ever ran into in the original contra which came out over 30 years ago. How simple run and gun controls are not perfected by now is mind boggling. -awkward camera. yes you read that right, awkward camera in a sidescroller. When you press up to aim up the camera shifts up, when you duck the camera shifts down, this often obstructs your view and is also very dizzying. Like for example, I am running through a level, an enemy is flying overhead shooting at me, I aim up at him and now I can no longer see enemies below me/ on the same plane. Very awkward and not needed. -boring level design, each level is a scavenger hunt for 3 letters that open a door where you fight a boss to get the last letter of the word exit and then you can leave the level. Exploring the levels is not fun, and there are several really obscure pieces. The traps are easy to avoid and there is no good platforming or heartpumping sections to be found. Just wander fighting samey enemies who won't kill you as often as the controls will. -terrible design choices, when you die the enemies respawn but the power ups dont? wtf? -you hit a checkpoint once and you can never activate them again, which means if you accidentally hit the checkpoint by the boss but cant fight him yet you will have to backtrack through a large portion of the level when you die on the boss. -no lock on/aim button (ie: contra 3) there is just a ton of things to hate in this game and I cannot recommend it to anyone, if the trailer interests you I would advise you go back and replay contra rather than mess with this trash game.

I never quited a game that fast... -Attrocious controls. -Imputs delay. -Where do i go type of deal -Can i jump on this or is it not a platform? And so on you got the idea. Stay away even for the price.

What a great little platformer/shooter! I picked this up for £1.60 and don't regret it one bit! If you like old retro games then this would be a good investment. Initially I found the controls a bit clunky but after a few minutes I started to get a grip of it and the gameplay flowed a lot better. I think the visuals are brilliantly defined with vibrant colours and generally polished. There are a few nice retro ditties and the sounds are functional enough. The pickups are pretty cool but I think leaving them for the end of level bosses would be a wise move. Also, once a level is complete, you can carry on from the level you are up to and your lives are restored. At present I've only passed the first two levels (out of 11) and have been enjoying it so far with nods to the likes of ESWAT, Titus the Fox, Ghost's n Goblins, Ghouls n Ghosts, Altered Beast, Turrican, Castlevania and I'm only on level three! Overall, I'm not sure if it warrants Steam's asking price of £9.99 but I reckon if you can grab it for a fiver or less and you like this sort of retro goodness, then snap it up!

For a full release, this feels somewhat unfinished (as it's currently on version 0.8L) Not contentwise, mind you. The amount of worlds and enemies to fight is plenty. But first of all, how was this released without multiplayer? A buddyshooter like this is destined to be played coop, and if I could blast through this with a friend, the game could be three times worse and I'd still recommend it. Coop is planned by the developer, but this isn't an Early Access-game and I'm reviewing the current state of the product. And if this doesn't have multiplayer, why the need to control two characters at once, even give me the option to switch? They share the same health, their weapons seem to be just as strong, even worse, the second characters' actions and fire feel delayed and sometimes glitchy. The movement feels weird, climbing on ladders stops you dead in your tracks and don't let you shoot and for a game that takes inspiration from older run and gun games, using one stick to both aim your gun and walk seems the wrong way to do it. While the presentation of the game is one of it's best selling points (think of that what you will), the distinction between jumpable and non-jumpable plattforms is nearly impossible and breakable objects needed for progress are easily missable. If this is discounted, maybe give it a try, if the local coop arrives, DEFINTELY try it. [spoiler]Also, a "second-form-after-death"-boss on the first stage? Yeah, thanks.[/spoiler]

Что мы имеем: - Платформер с элементами екшена. Главной задачей на уровне является - найти все части ключа для завершения уровня. - Графика в стиле 8-ми битных приставок "Сега", музыка от туда же. - Разнообразные враги - Разнообразное оружие (для смены нужно заходить в инвентарь) - Достижения - Поддержка контролера - Удобное управение Что не хватает в игре (по моему мнению): - Коллекционных карт - Снижение цены (очень дорого) - Минимальные подсказки, о том где следующая часть ключа, хотя бы стрелочку с направлением, очень тяжело искать, не зная секретов игры. - Нельзя сохраниться в середине уровня, не прошел уровень - начни его сначала. Другие мои обзоры: http://store.steampowered.com/curator/25737869/