Nightmare Reaper

I have mixed feelings on Nightmare Reaper. It's one of those games that exhausts me too much to play more than 2 hours at a time, and the game runs roughly 30 hours. So it took me several months to clear it, and I only really picked the game back up when I wanted something mindless. I had a lot of fun at first and soured on most aspects of the game by the end. To start off with, I think the early game experience is great. You're encouraged to cycle through weapons due to limited ammo, you have few movement abilities with a fair amount of depth, new enemies show up which are challenging, levels are straightforward to navigate with occasional backtracking. A string of new minigames are introduced which are brief distractions and give upgrades. But the game overstays its welcome and all of those strengths collapse into weaknesses. You're encouraged to hold onto a single broken weapon for the entire game since you can carry one with you, and the weapons are balanced so randomly that if you ever sell the weapon you risk essentially bricking. You get so many more movement abilities than you ever need to traverse levels, and your absurd mobility forces the game to make the last several areas just tight corridors where none of the abilities are useful. The levels also turn into mazes, which sounds interesting, except it just means running in circles through giant empty rooms and looking for the yellow rock on the ground. The enemies start homogenizing into bullet sponges, with a few random events which more or less kill you outright (find the enemy hidden in the level shooting you through walls!), and bosses which literally don't do anything. The minigames turn into a complete slog and the gimmick of them being "bad mario" or "bad pokemon" or "bad asteroids" just turns into them being "bad". I stopped getting the upgrades about halfway through two of the trees since I found them insufferable - I never really felt like I was lacking in power to justify turning them off. The game was really fun for 15 hours and that experience psy-op'd me into finishing the game because I was sure I was close to the end (I was not). If you like quake-style boomer shooters (ultra high mobility, zany weapons, etc), give it a shot. But I really don't think it's worth finishing once you sour on it because it's pretty much downhill from the start of chapter 2.

What a sorry ass waste of $4. The most confusingly ugly game I've ever seen. Looks like pixelated vomit. Random levels that are as basic as humanly possible, and they are very tiny. No permanent weapons. You have to choose only one at the end of a "stage" then the rest are automatically sold. Why? There just isn't much going on, and it is a lesson for me to start being way more selective in the games I buy.

It's not a bad game, really nice variety of weapons, some interesting mosters and movement that feels smooth. Music is wonderful. The problem for me is that the game suffers from the indie procedural bloat. It's the indie equivalent of what AAA games are doing with open world Ubisoft style games - needless padding. You go through progressively larger, more labyrinth-like levels just to lose all your guns except one, get some money and get some text, or a random door to open. Then you do it again. And again. And again. And then you have the mini-games. I get the idea is to break-up the monotony, but breaking up the monotony with very monotonous types of games of different genres is not good design. It's... you guest it - padding and filler. It results in a game that can be 50 hours of bloat when it could have been 18 hours of razor sharp fun. It's either to make the "I want 10 hours of gameplay per dollar spent" crowd happy or it's a developer that did not have someone to tell them to stop... You choose. In both cases the results is the same - not for me and not for people that actually want something to happen in their game. If you want a mindless experience to just keep you hands moving and worsen you carpel tunnel syndrome, while you listen to a podcast...then go for it. But it's a no for me.

You reap what you sow and I saw what you reaped. This game follows the mental state of my mother before she gave birth to me. But seriously, this is a fantastic roguelite retro shooter with beautiful pixel-art, fun core gameplay loop, ridiculous weapons which are always a positive surprise and sometimes overpowered which is a welcome trait. The music slaps and my only complaint is that some of the later stages seem a little bit unfair and overwhelming. But what I need to mention is that the dev is constantly improving everything, adding new content. I finished the game before he added co-op, so if you have some friends you have to try it 'cause I can already tell it's going to be a bigger blast with a buddy shooting holy bullets from an Uzi while you throw fishsticks at demons and recite the lyrics to Linkin Park's Crawling while doing so. 10/10, would face my demons once again, but sadly I took care of all of them (but my ex-mother in law is out there somewhere... she's the only one still breathing. But it's hard to kill Satan).

Крутой лутер-шутер с ах**** саундреком. Мясо, кровь, кишки и ультранасилие, всё как мы любим. Рекомендую. 10 золотых девастаторов из 10.

I played Doom LAN a lot growing up, and the fact that multiplayer was just introduced with this is amazing. What's nice too is that if there is anything you don't like odds are there's an option to turn it off. I have yet to beat it, but I keep coming back to it and starting over, just for the joy of seeing what I come out with. Civvie11 does a better love letter than I ever could, go watch his videos about this.

谁说女子不如男

[h3]★★★★-Frenético, brutal, con magnífico soundtrack, gran jugabilidad y alta rejugabilidad, es uno de mis boomer shooter favoritos, pero eso si, solo apto para los fanáticos de los juegos estilo vieja escuela.[/h3] Nightmare Reaper es un juego estilo DooM clásico mezclado con un looter shooter que tiene elementos roguelite sazonado con un ambiente tétrico. La jugabilidad es excelente porque es muy rápida y cuentas con varias habilidades desbloqueables. La campaña tiene buena duración e incentiva muchísimo a rejugarlo por la aletoriedad de las armas y niveles, además ofrece un buen reto y opciones para hacerlo aún más difícil. Tiene modos multijugador pero es totalmente disfrutable para 1 persona. El aspecto gráfico puede ser algo que odies o ames, por una parte adoro el diseño de los enemigos y escenarios, pero en momentos hay tanto caos en pantalla que incluso podrías terminar desorientado. Por otra parte el diseño de las interfaces en su mayoría es feo. Lo peor del juego son los mapas, simplemente son el ejemplo perfecto de cuando la generación al azar llega a ser contraproducente ya que será un hecho de qué muchas veces acabarás perdido. Otro aspecto negativo podrían ser los minijuegos, de inicio son bastante entretenidos pero a la larga unos se vuelven todo un fastidio aunque por fortuna son opcionales.

Best roguelike retro shooter ever made.

One of the best rogue-like shooters i've played! Imagine DOOM but its rogue-like. I LOVE how the game starts, there is no intro, no main menu everytime you boot the game up you start in a mental hospital as a patient, feels home right? The game has it all, music made by Andrew Hulshult who is known for great boomer shooter music. He also worked on the DOOM ancient gods OST. Gameplay has infinite replay and never gets boring. Graphics are beautiful and charming. Game has a huge variety of weapons and my personal favorite is the gore / blood effects! The game has even COOP - so you could team up with a friend and go through the nightmare together! Game is 10/10 - Totally worth getting yourself a copy (or two) on discount!