I grew up with Genesis/NES so I might be more forgiving toward this game just out of nostalgia, although I must say this game feels like a combination of Silver Surfer(NES) & MegaMan, maybe with a touch of Contra: Hard Corps when it comes to the visuals. About 60% of this game is flying and shooting in both directions, can be pretty punishing, but the normal difficulty had infinite respawns, and yet, still kinda challenging in some sections. Small note, the game settings can be accessed by pressing ESC, you can remap the controller or keyboard (I used Xbox one). To use widescreen change the aspect ratio/fullscreen in the settings.
I think it's a decent game, that said, I just feel like the overall consistency is not great, the art style and just about every other aspect of the game tends to fluctuate, everything from level design to the boss fights, it feels like the amount of effort the developer would put into areas is all over the place. For example, there are stages where the coloring feels 100% on brand with the Genesis, but then there are other levels where the color palette feels like an ugly rainbow, just the overall presentation of the game could have been a lot better, even when it comes to the menus which are basically filler. Even though I like the overall feel of the game, I think the level design is a little bit weak in terms of aesthetic, you change the gameplay so often that it's hard for any stage to feel memorable, like there is never truly a full platforming stage in this game, they all feel like half of the normal level length, if not a quarter.
Slightly unpolished gameplay, but it's fine, pretty much in line with what you would actually play on the old console, playable but not exactly perfect. There are some small things that I think would make it a little better, like there is no sound effect for the glide, in general, it feels like the game is missing that final stage of polish. The game also does the whole gravity change gimmick, I thought it was implemented well, I can't say that I had any issues with the timing.
[h1] Pros: [/h1]
(+) The game very much goes through the classic Genesis format, some platforming stages, some flying stages, and 2 bike perspectives, so it changes the moment-to-moment feel of the game pretty often. I will say the level design is relatively average in my opinion, but at least it has enough variety.
(+) As far as actually capturing the mood and the aesthetic of SEGA consoles, I felt the game got it maybe 70% to 100% right depending on the location, actually most of the songs and explosions really gave me that heavy Genesis sound chip feels. Again I think the visuals in this game are all over the place depending on the level, and that may not sound like a compliment, but at least you got that far, you could do worse.
(+) You can replay the game on harder modes or soft-speedrun it to get a different ending (if I am not mistaken).
[h1] Feedback: [/h1]
[u] Visual/Level Design [/u] - I felt like the overall aesthetic of the game did not have an ongoing theme, sometimes it feels like you going for Hard Corps, and sometimes it has more of a bright MegaMan feel to it, also the detail on some of tiles made it feel a bit random. I do think you were flipping the gameplay too often, it's fine to have some flying stages, it's just that all of the platforming stages felt so short, I never really get that sense of having an awesome platforming stage, I do think the game would benefit if you focused more on the theme of the location and its specific mechanics. Some of the UI elements and the menu itself don't look that great, you kinda want to give it some on-brand visuals too.
[u] Boss Fights [/u] - I felt like maybe half of the bosses in this game just didn't have enough attacks, if anything it felt like a test of patience, especially for the disc boss, Jesus. The 2 robots and the last boss were decent, I don't think that I liked the others.
[u] Sound effects [/u] - maybe a sound effect for the slide, perhaps a small dust animation for it as well. I had more notes but already forgot all of them, it felt like the game was missing some relevant sfx in general, also I think the music should be 10% higher or so. On that note, when you use the same song for different sections, one nice trick is to just reverb it a little and speed it up instead of just looping it from the start, would feel better in my experience.
And, maybe the super attack should charge 50% faster, it's barely even worth using.
[b] Overall Thoughts: 7/10 [/b]
I think it's a very good game but something about the overall presentation and just lacking consistency with the visuals made it feel cheaper than it should be, it's not as carefully planned as games like Cyber Shadow, and it's missing a little polish with the visuals and overall presentation, good but also a bit sloppy I guess. I enjoyed it, not sure about $10, you probably need a little bit of nostalgia to appreciate it.
[code]Niche, obscure and underrated games: http://store.steampowered.com/curator/31294838-Hidden-Gem-Discovery/ [/code]
