PixlBit

On paper, Nefarious is such a great idea. For once, you get to assume control of a villain, and instead of saving the princess, it’s your job to capture her. The boss battles that end a level? That's your time to shine and stop the would-be hero in his tracks. In execution, Nefarious is rife with issues. Unresponsive controls, mediocre gameplay, and progress halting bugs make for a game that’s just not at all what I had hoped it’d be.

Assuming the role of Crow, you’re on a quest to collect a princess from each kingdom of the land. Nabbing them all will grant you access to the power you need to rule the world. As such, you set out and begin grabbing princesses and thwarting their heroes to achieve your dastardly plan.

Each of the levels basically plays out the same way. Using your two attacks, a melee punch and a grenade launcher, you take on the kingdom’s army in a 2D sidescrolling platformer. The attempt to stop you is formidable and there’s no doubt that you’re going to die along the way. Most attacks will eat up one of your (starting) six bits of life and quite often you’ll be bombarded with enemy fire, taking hits quite frequently. But despite enemy fire, you're still apt to kill yourself thanks to some finicky controls and a shoddy double jump that never seems to work quite right.

When you can manage to avoid suicide, your grenade launcher is your best bet for success as it allows you to attack from a distance. While this makes it easier to get through the levels, frankly, it’s not a fun way to play. When I think about assuming the role of supervillain, fighting foes from the distance isn't what comes to mind. 

After inflitrating the castle, you'll have you chance to grab the princess (or prince), which is where Nefarious gets a bit more fun and interesting. Once you toss the princess over your shoulder, you’ll unlock a temporary new ability for the duration of the level. The bee princess gives you a floaty high jump, while the demon princess allows you to shoot a grenade that creates a path to walk along. This helps you escape and makes the gameplay a bit more diverse and fun than it was breaking into the castle.

The escape sequence is punctuated with a boss fight, except here, you're the big baddie. Early on, you pilot a Robotnik-like craft and smash the hero with a giant wrecking ball. In another you’re manning a huge mech and punching the hero, and perhaps the most inventive one involves a turn-based RPG battle against a group of heroes. It’s this back half of the level that makes me have at least a little appreciation for Nefarious. It's at its best when embraces the theme of the game and allows you to properly assume your anti-hero role.

Unfortunately, even these segments aren’t much fun due to some really awkward controls and an imbalance in damage. The mech battle mentioned earlier had the hero taking out a quarter of my life per hit while my giant fist smashing would only remove a small sliver of his health. It was awkward to control, difficult to dodge attacks and just unfair and devoid of fun. I certainly understand taking steps to even the playing field a bit so the game is not a walk in the park, but the way it’s executed here is just poor.

Even upgrades feel botched. You can upgrade simple things like how much life and ammo you have, but you can also improve your melee attack as well as how your grenade launcher behaves. However, each upgrade is extremely expensive based on how much currency you collect in a level and you’ll usually only walk out with enough to buy a single upgrade between levels.

Part of the problem is that you lose currency upon death and need to reach the place you died to recollect what you’ve lost. Falling into a pit makes it tough to grab what you lost and dying again only causes you to lose more. There were a couple levels where I walked out with less than I came in with. And maybe a nitpick, but some of the melee upgrades that you splurge on seem either pointless or not worth the money spent for the improvement. The machine gun upgrade to replace my grenade launcher might be the biggest scam as it doesn't even seem to hurt enemies.

Achieving all of the upgrades will certainly give you some more to do in Nefarious, as will collecting the crowns and records strewn about each level. However, I believe the records might actually be a hidden form of torture, because the music featured in each level is some of the most annoying I've ever heard in a video game. The person who willingly chooses to listen to these from the jukebox on the ship might want to seek professional help.

My time with Nefarious came to an abrupt halt towards what seems to be the end of the game. Upon trying to enter Bramble Flats (the level after finally collecting all the princesses) the game would crash during the intro cutscene in the same spot every time. Whether there’s a lot more beyond this level is unknown to me, but as of publish time, I still cannot access that level and continue my quest (UPDATE - 10/09/18 - This issue has been patched and the release date was moved so that nobody will ever encounter this in the Switch version of the game).

While it’s unfortunate that I wasn’t able to finish the game for the purposes of this review, I don’t think it’d sway my opinion over the quality of Nefarious. It’s a half-baked game that needs more playtesting and refinement. Some of the ideas are clever and show promise of being fun, but they’re so often held back by poor execution it makes it even more disappointing. Maybe in time patches will make this a better game, but as of right now, it’s not one you should consider.