The Final Specimen: Arrival

Pros: - Good sense of humour - Fun platforming gameplay, similar to a retro PC game - Awesome soundtrack - Creative boss battles Cons: - Graphical issues (There are some moments when the background and foreground blend into each other and make it less obvious what is and isn't ok to stand on) - The tube maze portions of the game are confusing and repetitive - sort of short Overall, The Final Specimen: Arrival is a hilarious and fun game that is well worth checking out. Don't let the MS Paint style graphics put you off from the game, it's actually really awesome! UPDATE 17/07/16: The developer has since changed the boss patterns in hard mode. I feel like it adds more of a challenge and keeps the game fresh. Even the first boss has a new, more challenging pattern the player will have to learn.

THis game starts of promissing with a decent music and decent arwork but immediatly you notice that there are no options, then you get thrown into a level of tubes with spykes at the sides even thoug you cant move in this pipe, only stay in the middle. the enmies that get thrown at you with no warning are easily killed but you first have to discover that you have to fight them and cant evade. this game broke me completely on level 3 where you encounter a bunch of pipes with arrows byut when you push the smae way as those arrows nothing happens and you still get thrown in to acid, every single time. due to this level and the price I dont reccomend buying this game my video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pyvsGzMPccw

The “Extra-Life” -- the original gaming MacGuffin. As a kid, nothing matched the feeling of excitement when discovering a 1-Up in a secret area -- it was my first brush with an endorphin rush, and it’s where my love for gaming began. Though over time, the extra-life has slowly become somewhat of an antiquated notion; a relic of the gaming past. I never realized the nostalgic weight behind that feeling until I played The Final Specimen: Arrival, and when I found that glowing “T” in the suburban bushes of Doofusville. It’s a feeling I didn’t realize how much I had missed as a gamer, and it also made me convinced as to why TFS is a truly special entry in contemporary gaming. Modernity never graces itself anywhere throughout TFS in all avenues, allowing the player to resign themselves to an earlier time in gaming, and without compromise. The result: the player sinks into their seat, and a familiar feeling settles in and the player embarks on an uncontaminated, and highly sentimental experience. TFS isolates a core gaming era, where Super Mario Bros. set the table for the side-scroller onslaught and players’ insatiable desire for more challenging gameplay within familiar mechanics. TFS is cemented in that time, consumed by the same preoccupations of those early developers: two games per one of their competitors. These feelings are seldom found in nostalgia-trip games of the past few years. Many have mistakenly assumed that pixilation and 8-bit soundtracks are sufficient to encapsulate the essence of the floppy-disk game -- but few have matched TFS in its almost stubborn effort to remain true to its comrades. It is a staunch vestige of a lost era; an artifact that increases in value along the way. The game wants you to fail; you never feel safe. But at the same time, it wants you to learn; to develop a very specific mindset. Your controllers become an extension of your body, and you slowly become a veteran as you play. When the sting of a missed opportunity to an extra life hangs above your character’s head, a motivation burns to never miss a similar opportunity – you begin to think a step ahead each move. It is a sting seemingly forgotten in modern gaming -- possibly for the best -- though TFS does not offer that debate, and frankly it doesn’t have to. There is a romanticism to The Final Specimen: Arrival; a love letter to the days of the floppy-disked side-scrollers you once incessantly searched your childhood basements to find on a rainy Saturday. It calls to the early 90’s player, and demands your entire return to that time. But what makes TFS so special is its refusal to offer a refined nostalgia, and it instead doubles down on both its imperfections and camp value -- the player could have found this game in a cereal box, and that’s where its genius lies. I highly recommend The Final Specimen: Arrival -- it is a welcome and enjoyable jaunt down a precious memory, and you will not want to put it down.

When I first fired up The Final Specimen, I had the strangest sensation: an odd itch to check my pocket for the reassuring weight of a pile of quarters. Everything about this game screams old school arcade action - from the cartoon-style graphics to the three-button control scheme - and a reminder of what challenging platform gaming was all about. The story is engaging, the snappy fully-voiced dialogue reminding me of Family Guy/South Park and providing a welcome interlude between levels. The overall design is exceptionally well built out. You can tell the developers spent a lot of time playing platformers, as even the opening level sends you on a trip through a series of tubes that could have come straight out of an old Sonic game. The enemies are especially well-designed if slightly unforgiving - it takes some trial and error to figure out the best way to approach and defeat bosses and even some regular mobs, but the abundance of health powerups and extra lives ensure that you'll make it through long before you run out of quarters.

this game LOOKS like it was made in ms paint, but that is fine and so is everything else

Classic 90's platformer for sure. Has all the charm of the old games, with the frusration, confusion, and ultimate satisfaction with beating a level. Very solid ode to the old. Makes me feel like I was at the rental store, and this was my weekend game. Fun play, haven't beat it yet, but so far it has had a good learning curve. If you are itchin' for a nostalgic 90's platformer to bring back your childhood, look no further.

I definitely recommend this game. The cartoony graphics are endearing and sometimes hilarious, the mechanics are simple but quite varied thoughout the game, the music is great, and the story is pretty funny. The hand-drawn style of the artwork is fairly unique, yet still gives the feel of an early 90's game. Easy mode is fairly straight forward, but hard mode provides a definite challenge. Definitely try out this game if you enjoy nostalgic platformers where you die a lot while laughing at the various ways you can die. One thing that is missing is the ability to continue where you left off between sessions. I think a standard save feature would take away from the challenge of the game, but I don't want to have to beat the whole thing in one sitting. Hopefully this feature is added soon.

The Final Specimen: Arrival is a hilarious action platformer game in the style of retro arcade games. You run, jump and punch your way through creative levels and bossfights. Each level is its own unique environment you have to learn the rules of to complete it. Pros: -Funny. It made me laugh out loud a few times. Even the backgrounds are ridiculous! How many other places do see an advertisement for the "Butthead beach and resort"? Not enough :P -Music/soundtrack - the tunes are really catchy and it sounds professionally recorded. -Cutscenes! Cons: -Can't save progress/ it's all one speedrun. I play games a bit at a time, so not being able to save doesn't fit my needs.

I like the gameplay of this game, and it definetly has it appeal. It's really goofy, and it reminds me of something you would have watched on newgrounds. I'm not a fan of the graphics, and I know it's supposed to be that way. It's such a weird game to me, but the worst part has to be the music. I absolutely hate the music in this game, it's just so obnoxious and repetitive. It made me not want to continue at all. I'm a 90s kid, and this definetly made me feel like I was playing a low budgeted 90s game where you find at a flea market or something. The game is decent, but I just don't see myself recommending it. I feel bad, because the developers probably did his best to replicate that 90's type of pc gaming feeling. Which they succesfully did. I grew up playing snes capcom games, and I never really played games on pc back then. I was just never a fan of those pc games with questionalable graphics, and art style. This is one of those games where the gameplay is great, but the art style and music did annoy me.

I had a lot of fun with this game. It's got a real quirky cartoon feel to it, both in the art style and story/dialog. As someone who is really into the old school 90s-feeling sidescrollers, I definitely dug it.