“Nostalgia beckons”
As soon as I saw the trailer for this game, I was going to buy it. I held off for a day, a singular day but after finishing work and opening the PSN, I buckled. It was a retro-looking, beat ‘em up, set in the 80’s and looked to be crammed with references galore and with that being said, if you know me or ANYTHING about me, you know this was a game I needed. I had played the demo the night before (on my PC), just to see if it was for me and obviously, it was. I blitzed through the tutorial as I had to start all over again, which was a little annoying but as I did, little did I realise the starting over and being subject to the same cutscenes would be a common occurrence throughout my playthrough.
Initially, I was in love with the game. It was charming and had subtle references to things I grew up loving and they were abundant as I learnt the ropes and as the story began to unfold. The gameplay was simple but easy to master and the characterisation was great as each kid you played had a different personality/ideal and would say something different when inspecting the same object as another kid. This was easy to do, as character swapping is meant to be easy and done so often. The music was a retro chip tune delight with obvious nods to modern scores such as Stranger Things and Drive. All this, mixed in with self-referential humour, was great… in the beginning, but as the game progressed, the references were few and far between. The game developers own story needed to make its way through and NORMALLY this would be good, as I wouldn’t want to be oversaturated by references (I find this to be an easy way out and lazy writing) but when the original writing is not interesting or falls emotionally flat, it paved the way for more reference to help the game along and sadly they stopped.
The story lost intensity about 40% way through the game and this could be due to a few issues that I found arose throughout my few hours of gameplay. The first could just be that I don’t feel the emotional gravitas that was trying to be enforced was done correctly? It could be the fact that sometimes the game was a little difficult and I feel like it was taking the old route of making the player learn through trial and error (which seems likely with all the nods to the old Lucas Arts games) but if you’re going to make character repeat part of your game, don’t make them have to sit through cutscenes or make them play another annoying part of the game when there is no way to be prepared for the coming death? So, maybe after seeing certain parts of the impactful storyline, I became numb to the situation, as I wasn’t that invested due to other reasons but after repeating them, I became even more so.
That being said, the story was my biggest issue. I think the game had a tonne of potential and maybe suffered from a lack of identity, but the gameplay was at least tight and the music was pretty good when it needed to be. There isn’t really much else to mention as it was a short game and gameplay wise, it was fairly simple; explore area, solve puzzle, beat creatures and proceed. Sounds simple and it was, that’s why the story needed to be top notch and sadly (to me) the story fell flat, especially towards the end. Which was the thing that bothered me the most, it felt like it was trying its hardest to pull emotion out of me and it simply did nothing. Again, this could be due to the fact the last boss almost instant kills you if you don’t know what you’re doing, and it has a few waves (and if you die, you have to repeat a cutscene and those waves over again). So obviously I wanted a victorious heartfelt ending with massive pay off and what I got… was far from that.
I guess when I think about it, I enjoyed some of the adventure and how it wasn’t like most games out there and as Stephen King says (and I’m paraphrasing here): “It’s not about the ending, it’s about the journey you took to get there”. So, for what it was, it was good, and I would insist that you at least play the demo and see what you think. I thought it was for me, it was but I think I just wanted more.