In Pizza Tower I got to the vigilante and don’t think I can do the moving and shooting required. I really like the levels but now this boss is gating me from anything new. Might bow out here.
Meanwhile in Shadow of the Ninja Reborn I am similarly stuck on stage 5-1 but feel like persisting with it. A game like this has a very deliberate feeling design that rewards a player making a careful series of steps, not necessarily a quick series. Pizza Tower by contrast is naturally very frenetic and focused on speed.
Some of my favourite deliberate choices in the ‘little design’ of Shadow of the Ninja Reborn:
You can pogo on your stick and even stand on it but the use cases for this are very limited which, like many abilities, asks you to remember a full moveset and what the level wants from you. You can pogo over some enemies and some rare cases can only be damaged with a strike from above
The double jump is really more of an extended float to the jump arc but is needed to get past some gaps that are a foot or so too big for your regular jump. Arguably it should be a double tap rather than jump and down + jump but I think it helps with the feeling of a non-standard moveset of secret techniques for specific situations rather than spamming double jump everywhere. The platforming feels more tense thanks to it.
You can’t select or use your weapon while hanging. Your hands are busy dummy. If you’re going to take advantage of hanging to escape, something’s gotta give.
The kusarigama-style chain can hit in 8 directions and is always available to you, no matter which weapon you have selected. In a way it’s your primary weapon but outside of the realm of the primary weapon slot. Sword slot = horizontal offense with variety, kusarigama/chain = standard multidirectional offense.
Some items are natural enemy counters or only really work in certain environments. You also have the higher game of trying to complete a level with as many items in your inventory as possible so you can unlock and purchase them at the beginning of a new run. This is good because it makes inventory management more challenging with more active slots, but the reward is greater if say, you can acquire 7 items and make sure none go beyond their last use. Most bosses are very easy with items and become very difficult without, but the game lets you choose how much you want this difficulty in the moment and for planning later runs. However, I think the inventory is a little too slow to actually navigate and the more items you have the harder it gets to remember what was last selected and how many ‘rights’ or ‘lefts’ it takes to get to what you want. It’s like those crazy Souls runs where people re-equip equipment mid-fight except it’s a part of regular play and often leads to death.
The digital foundry on it is pretty good. Makes me wanna check out the other Natsume remakes since I enjoyed Ninja Warriors a lot as well.
that was more a conceptual description rather than “it’s a legitimately working NES game” along with there not being any Rugrats games until the N64/PSX
also that demo is probably around a fifth of the full game. it’s probably a 40-50 minute game even on your first try
I found it hard to stop playing Astro Bot but the thing I enjoy more than the levels is doing laps of the hub world. I don’t feel much different about it than I did after the first world. It’s solid, generally on the easier side. I didn’t realise there’s some ARG-style secret unlocks in Astro’s Playroom that transfer over to Astro Bot, they’re kinda neat but just use a guide.
I think critics seem to be very easily pleased by it and I kept waiting for the ‘crazy stuff’ but there are less surprises than you’d assume. Late in the game I was worried about the lack of Wipeout reps and was pleasantly surprised but then depressed all over again. The game is a big self-cheer for Japan Studio. I heard the lead animator on The Last Guardian animated Trico in this game. Simultaneously cool and dispiriting. The guest-bot animations are probably one of the best things the game has to offer. They can’t make another one of these.
I don’t think Astro Bot has any bot unlocks of the same puzzly nature as the Astro’s Playroom bonus bots. I wonder if that concept is something they’d ever want to revisit. The only one I got, the Returnal one, is kind of a wild process that’s hard to figure out even if you’ve played Returnal since it goes against your instincts in Astro’s Playroom.
Unlock process.
You first have to find the Returnal bot that’s hidden off the side of a platform until you walk close enough to the edge of the platform. It’ll be locked in a cage. Then you need to go elsewhere to find a hidden item, the Astronaut doll, that’s inconspicuously lying on the floor in a less-trodden area and let yourself get killed by an enemy while standing on it. This will unlock the Returnal bot from its cage. The Astronaut doll is a one-time revive item in Returnal, so Astro’s Playroom requires you to know that and then figure out you need to recreate that scenario from the game.
Wipeout even got a dualspeeder color!
The rapturous reception of the game is interesting and I’m curious to read reviews just to see why it’s resonating so loudly with people. It’s a game that’s definitely won me over but I’m curious why people are so insistent on this being one of the best platformers ever, up there among the best Marios. It’s got a lot of inventiveness and ingenuity throughout, but it doesn’t strike me as that much of a revelation.
Now, if this game was in VR? Whoo boy! Now we’d be talking!
Within Mario I see it as either 3d World or Odyssey depending on taste. 3D world has tightly paced challenges and a utopian aesthetic, Odyssey has messy open spaces and an experimental aesthetic. Personally like Felix I am in the 3D world camp and Odyssey left me relatively cold, for a lot of other people it seems to be the reverse.
It’s probably also worth mentioning some highly rated indie 3d platformers in my Steam wishlist that I keep meaning to get to: A Hat in Time and Snake Pass.
I thought A Hat in Time was a lot more experimental in a handful of ways than Astro Bot generally ever gets. I think it helps to have a bit of a semantic layer you can play with, A Hat in Time is Kojima-esque at some points.
Hm apparently the closest thing to a 3D platformer that I like is Demon’s Souls. = P Or wait the mainline Souls games get a Jump button eventually? (Elden? Or before that?) Whichever one that is then, probably, if I ever get that far.
Sorry about this post, too much self-inflicted sleep deprivation. ; D
