[quote]A review copy was provided by the developer.[/quote]
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[h1]Overall Rating - High Quality ★★★★☆[/h1]
[h1]First Impressions[/h1]
Looking at the trailers and some videos on Probo Rush (PR), I knew it wouldn't be much more than a handful of boss battles, but I wound up wanting to try fighting them myself. They looked just challenging enough to be interesting, while not being outright unfair nonsense. Having played it for myself, I think there may be just a little bit of nonsense here and there, but it's nonetheless pretty fun to play.
[h1]Gameplay[/h1]
Aside from a tutorial, there's only two modes available in PR. You either choose an individual boss to fight against or go through the Boss Rush. I somewhat expected Boss Rush to be a type of survival mode, where any damage you received would accumulate, and upon death you'd fail. Instead, you have infinite retries, and when you die, you just restart on whatever boss you were facing. The amount of health you'll have per attempt will remain constant, so you can make it much easier or harder that way. It works more like a gauntlet then anything else. Since there's now 15 bosses to face, and each takes around two minutes, you'll want more time than you might expect before trying it.
Before going into that gauntlet you'll certainly want to beat each boss so you know how to approach them. While fighting them, you have four weapons that you can switch between freely: a machine gun, spread shot, homing missiles, and flamethrower. Looking at the machine gun, it can do a surprising amount of damage, but it fires a single line of bullets, so it can be hard to hit the mark. Spread shot has a similar fire-rate, does a little less damage, but covers much of the screen. Homing missiles require the least amount of aim since they home in on the boss, although if you aren't firing at the right angle they may not track properly and miss. The main downside is how little damage they do. Last is the flamethrower, which is the hardest to use due to its incredibly short range. When you can make use of it, the high damage output is great, making it a high-risk, high-reward kind of gun.
[h1]Controls[/h1]
I played PR with my controller, and found it to be responsive. Switching weapons is easy, as is fixing your position in order to fire without moving. The only difficulty about that comes from whether the boss gives you the opportunity to do so, as some will have you moving around constantly. Thankfully, you have a weapon that can track bosses if it's too hard to fire at them consistently. Despite dying pretty often, I wouldn't blame the controls for screwing anything up.
[h1]Story[/h1]
This game doesn't provide any plot behind where these bosses came from or why you'd be so gung-ho to kill them. I don't think anything even indicates the protagonist's name. It's solely focused on the gameplay, and that's just fine with me.
[h1]Visuals[/h1]
For those who grew up during the NES era of gaming, the first thought that popped into your mind when seeing PR was Contra. That's not by accident, as the developer indicates that was specifically their intent when making this game. What I didn't know at first was how they intended on making a full Contra-like game, started that process with the boss battles first, then at some point, decided to just release a boss fighting game. Either way, PR has really clean visuals because it makes use of small pixels. Certain objects, typical larger ones such as the backgrounds and bosses, have the smoothest designs. I only notice the pixels in smaller items, such as projectiles or the protagonist.
[h1]Sound Design[/h1]
In a conventional game, having a single boss theme doesn't tend to be much of an issue. After all, when you've got a banger of a tune, it can hype up the fight for a player who just got through a long stage. It's a little less punchy in PR because every boss you face has the same song, so it never changes throughout all of your playtime. Based on the recent addition of five bosses, many of which had a nautical theme, I think it would have been fitting to have three versions of the song. One for the machines, another for monsters or nature, and an aquatic rendition, just to give a little bit of variety. Thankfully, even with this matter, none of the bosses have irksome sound effects from their moves.
[h1]Pros[/h1]
🌟 Since fighting all the bosses is the only gameplay mechanic, I think the time it takes to beat all of them was about right. Some of them could be a real aggravation in a conventional game, but since you can try repeatedly their duration and difficulty makes more sense.
🌟 I enjoyed the variety and creativity from the boss designs. Even with the Contra inspiration, none of them felt like a rip-off.
🌟 The developer added five bosses in a free update. A nice bonus for a game all about fighting bosses.
[h1]Cons[/h1]
❌ Unless you manage certain bosses just right, I think there will be times you'd face unavoidable damage. That seemed to happen often during the 10th boss, based on whether it'd veer left or right after projectile spam. Run and jump only gives you so many options.
❌ The achievements don't mean much when you can just turn on invincibility and beat every boss and challenge with total impunity. I beat every boss without doing that so I wouldn't feel completely shameless, but I did this for the Gaming God achievement.
❌ I couldn't take screenshots for some reason.
[h1]Tips[/h1]
🔍 The hardest bosses are the ones with the most amount of randomness in their behavior. For instance, the first two bosses follow an extremely fixed pattern, so they're easily handled. Bosses like the 3rd and 7th have projectiles that home in on you or don't follow a simple pattern. They can still be mastered, but require more finessing.
🔍 Choosing the right weapon at the right time can make a big difference. Doing a lot of damage might shorten a hard phase and improve your odds, while other times, dodging and letting the homing missiles do the work is best.
🔍 You'll select how much health you have from the options, but at any time can pause the game and activate assist mode.
[h1]Final Thoughts[/h1]
My reason for getting PR wasn't to challenge myself with dire boss battles and achievements. Instead, I just wanted to enjoy that kind of gameplay without getting frustrated, and it delivered on that for me. Although I stand behind how it cheapens the achievements, I liked having the option to cheat my way through any battle I wanted to, at any time. I've played difficult games and pushed myself in other situations, so it's nice to have a laid-back counterpart now and again. Unless you restrain yourself, choosing to fight honorably, the downside is that the game won't take long to finish. Plus, now that I've gotten it out of my system, I don't feel much need to replay the fights, so this is a title I'd recommend on sale simply due to how short it is.
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[table]
[tr]
[th]PC Specs[/th]
[th]Performance[/th]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td]Ryzen 2700
RTX 2070
16GB RAM
ADATA SSD
1920x1080
[/td]
[td]The game ran without incident on default settings.
💖 - PR is healthy
[/td]
[/tr]
[/table]
