PixlBit

Got some more game reviews dancing your way that I recently wrote at GamerDad.com!  Please click on and read as many of the links as you can, and maybe even post a ‘like’ or comment or two.  I’d appreciate it.  And as Shantae would say, “Ret-2 Go!”

Shantae and the Seven Sirens (PS4)

I’m a HUGE fan of the Shantae game series.  I even still have the original game on Game Boy Color, box and all!  But who is Shantae?  She’s a half-human, half-genie dancer who can magically transform into different animals to help her get past obstacles in her 2-D platforming adventures.  In her newest escapade, Shantae and her friends travel to a tropical island for a much needed vacation.  Other Half-Genies will be there, too, so Shantae is especially excited to meet more of her kind.  But shortly after she arrives, the other Half-Genies disappear.  Risky Boots, the nefarious she-pirate and Shantae’s arch-nemesis, has been snooping about the island as well.  Could she be behind all of this?  It’s up to you to find out in Shantae and the Seven Sirens.  The game is a “Metroidvania” title, but I try not to use that term in my official reviews.  One neat thing about this entry is there are fully animated and voiced cutscenes.  Makes me want to see a Shantae cartoon!  I did order a physical copy of this along with a Shantae plush because you just don’t see merchandise like that.  I also don’t usually get Funko Pop figures, but I did get the Shantae one as well. 

PONG Quest (Switch)

For the longest time I thought the first video game I ever played was Pac-Man.  But it was actually PONG, I just didn’t realize it at the time.  You see, when I was very little, my dad built our very first TV.  He ordered parts and instructions through a place called Heathkit.  This was in the late 70’s, so it was a great big old wooden monster that looked like a piece of furniture.  But that TV also lasted well until I was in high school!  He also built a metronome with Heathkit, and one of the other extra things he added to the TV was a home PONG clone that you could pull out at any time and play if you changed it to channel 3.  I was so young at the time, though, that I didn’t realize this was a video game, just something you could do if there wasn’t anything on TV.  Anyway, that’s my PONG story.  Never would I have imagined that someone would combine PONG with a dungeon crawling RPG, but now you have PONG Quest.  I like how they let you dress up your paddle (there are red and green overalls for instance), and they make reference in the game to other Atari franchises like BreakOut and Centipede!  Check out my review for all the full details!

80’s Overdrive (Switch)

Father’s Day just came by, and sometimes around now I think about the video games my dad likes to play.  While he currently mostly plays casual games on his iPad, back when I was a kid, he played a lot of racing games in the arcade.  I remember sitting in his lap in the sit-down racing arcade cabinets to play hits like Pole Position and Turbo.  Years later when I was too big to sit in his lap, he still played arcade racers like OutRun and Ridge Racer.  And one of the few games I could get him to play on the NES was Rad Racer!  So when I saw 80’s Overdrive on the Switch, it made me think of him.  80’s Overdrive is a retro inspired pixel racer that plays similarly to OutRun.  Is it as good as OutRun?  No, of course not.  But it does do neat things like let you design your own tracks (in a way) and I enjoyed this game probably more than what I should.

Awesome Pea 2 (PS4)

There are plenty of retro-styled games out there now that imitate the look of 8- and 16-bit games, but not so many that recreate the pea soup green hues of the original Game Boy!  But now you can play one ironically starring a little green pea!  Awesome Pea 2 is a super hard 2-D platformer in the vein of other popular ones like Super Meat Boy.  I never played the original Awesome Pea, so I don’t know if the sequel has any significant improvements, but I’m going to make a guess that it’s just more of the same.

Megabyte Punch (Switch)

Do you like Smash Bros.? (Who doesn’t?).  Do you miss the 2-D platforming sections in previous Smash installments like the Subspace Emissary?  And do you also miss being able to edit your moves like in the Wii U Smash?  If you said ‘yes’ to those questions, than you may want to try Megabyte Punch.  It uses the exact same control scheme as Smash, but allows you to control a robot with customizable parts as you tromp through 2-D platform areas, brawling other robots along the way.  It’s like a cross between Smash Bros. and the GameCube classic Custom Robo.  It’s a decent game, but I’m not very good at Smash Bros. (although I still like it) so I found this one way too hard.

Fly Punch Boom! (Switch)

If there was ever a game that needed the Dragon Ball Z license, this is it!  Fly Punch Boom! is a unique take on fighting games.  You control a Punchy, a super powerful being with the ability to fly and possesses ridiculously strong attacks.  You fight other Punchies in locations like cities, underwater, and even outer space.  I guess I just didn’t ‘get’ the game in the end, though.  I’m not a big fan of quick time events in games, which this one is full of.  And these things happen so fast in the game that you have to have split second reaction times and if you blink, you’ll miss them.  Plus the camera can zoom from far out to see the whole battlefield, to a close up of a character’s face in less than a second.  And this happens all the time so it can get very chaotic and disorienting.  If the game ran at about half the speed, I’d probably like it more.  But because of the way it is, I couldn’t even get past the first guy!

Knight Squad (Switch)

Play as one of several multicolored knights as you battle it out in top down viewed arenas in a gameplay style similar to Gauntlet or Atari’s Combat on 2600.  Up to eight can go at it locally or online.  It’s all right, but it lacks the charm of other ‘knight’ games like Shovel Knight or Castle Crashers.

Rigid Force Redux (Switch)

Rigid Force Redux is a horizontally side scrolling 2-D shooter, using elements from classics like R-Type and Einhander but with 3-D polygon graphics.  A bit too hard, though.

And those are all the games!  Thanks for reading my reviews and posting ‘likes’ and comments.  I do really appreciate it.  Later!  --Cary