Seems like each time, there are fewer and fewer interesting games on Game Pass, though part of this is that some are repeats like Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night or Steamworld Dig 2. I did manage to find a few games worth recommending, though, at least on sale. (I’ve learned not to post about the games I didn’t like)

Plus, I swear that the Xbox PC app (or maybe Game Pass itself) doesn’t support local save: there was one time a while back where I got a pop-up telling me that my local save was different from my cloud save (with the cloud save being labeled “newer” even though they both have the same timestamp) only to realize I’d lost quite a bit of progress in the game I was playing (LevelHead), but at the time, I chalked it up to the system lying about the cloud save being newer, as that’s what I had chosen. Now, though? I lost count of how many times I lost progress in Wargroove 2, despite the fact that I chose the “local” save this time. It’s not the game’s fault, either, because Wargroove 2 has auto-save: even if you hit alt+F4 in the middle of the enemy’s turn, the game will save which level you’re at, what units are where, and even which ones have moved already so you can resume EXACTLY where you left off. On Game Pass, though, there would be times the game would crash and I’d end up restarting in the middle of the previous level, and there were two times where using the game’s “undo turn” feature would also send me back to a different level! The only other thing I noticed is that I had some internet trouble a few times in the last month, so between that and the fact it happened with two separate games a few years apart, I don’t know what else it could be.

Anyway, the recommendations:

• Monstro: Battle Tactics
  

  14 hours playtime

  9 of 23 achievements

Puzzle game. Sure, it has the mechanics and theming of a tactics game, but there’s no resources/unit-building like Advance Wars (the units you’re given in a level is all you have to work with), nor are there any reinforcements or random-chances (thank goodness) like in other tactics games; the only range on stats is for how far away units can attack from. On top of this, many levels require specific actions to win–to the point the game even previews where enemies plan on going if you mouse-over them (they can be blocked if another unit stops there first), as many levels require you to bait enemies towards/away from things. In fact, you can even undo individual unit actions, even going back to previous turns or back to the start of the battle! This helps with less-than-intuitive parts because if you get caught off-guard by the fact that moving onto traps means you can’t attack with that unit or you didn’t realize locked enemies can still attack units next to them, you can just click the back arrow and try again without starting the level over.

Although there are some tricky levels here and there, most of the puzzles aren’t too difficult. Even the “++” campaigns don’t always bring the difficulty up much further than the main campaigns. Some maps can seem long and complicated at first, but more often than not, you’ll find that your first instincts on where to send units will only require minor adjustments at best to achieve victory. That said, some levels have optional objectives, but they’re not told to you in-game; they’re only mentioned in the game’s achievement list on Steam, so you wouldn’t even know they’re there until you get one by accident or you go out of your way to check the list when you’re not playing. It’s also sporadic which levels have them, so you’re probably better off just beating the campaigns normally and going back for achievements afterward. Plus, two achievements are glitched (and have been for years): the “beat Monster++ 19 with five units alive” is triggered simply for beating that level at all (even if you only have two units left), and the “kill all enemies in Monster++ 16” is awarded for beating Monster++ 4 (a different level).

Overall, its okay. I can recommend it since it’s free.

aaand here’s the other game I used my Amazon Prime free trial for. Remember: if you use a free trial of Amazon Prime, you get another free trial within 12 months (and it never expires), even if you cancel your previous trial before getting charged.

Platformer. Standard left/right movement and jump, X punches, RT tosses your grappling hook in the direction you’re holding, RB uses your equipped special move, and holding LT makes you run. Similar to Super Beast Hunt, it’s easy to forget that you can run at all since it’s rarely necessary, and stuff like this is quickly becoming another of my pet peeves. However, the rest of the controls are very responsive, with special note going to the fact that the punches DON’T have beat-‘em-up combos, so you don’t have to worry about getting stuck in a way-too-long attack animation just for one hit, nor do you risk taking unfair damage because the game won’t let you move for an extended period of time. Plus, if that’s still too much, your grappling hook can also deal damage to enemies, and it reaches much further than your punches. However, you are forced to a standstill if you use it on the ground, and it takes a second to return to you, so it ends up having the very problem the punches avoided.

There’s a stage select after the first level, but unlike Mega Man, you don’t get any special powers for beating them. You do unlock equippable special moves that you can buy, but you can only have four of them equipped at once, and they don’t appear to have any advantage against the bosses, so there’s really no excuse for the game to make you re-fight the bosses at the end like it does. You think it’ll be different at first, just having a large crystal that cycles between the different boss powers, but then nope: you get teleported to a rematch against them anyway. So disappointing. Rokko Chan did something similar, and it was just as disappointing there, too–except that game actually gave you the boss powers…and is free.

Level design is pretty good, but the difficulty curve does seem to be reversed. The controls take a bit of getting-used-to, what with the grappling hook stopping you in place and the fact that you can only punch once or twice in midair (making certain parts take a bit longer than they really should). Then, the stage select bosses have your typical cheap hits that you can’t react to on your first go, such as the top-left boss’s giant laser (that you can only barely run away from) or the bottom-right’s highlighted squares that you’d think are about to be targeted by an attack until–all of the sudden–the entire REST of the screen gets filled with spikes instead! However, each stage has several optional areas that are indicated by cracked walls or the like, and once you’ve found two of the max-HP-increasing items and bought three passive upgrades (because you can only have three equipped at once anyway), you can usually just tank the bosses’ less-than-fair hits and beat most of them on your first try, at least on Normal mode. Even the final boss I beat on my second attempt.

Overall, not too bad. Get it on sale.

Thank goodness the new SG thread for Amazon Prime freebies popped up when it did; I almost missed their giveaway for this game!

2D Metroidvania Platformer with twinstick aiming. It’s awkward to have to switch on the fly between aiming with right-stick and jumping with the A button, but in fairness, the game does use every other button: RT shoots, RB dashes, B switches between your primary and secondary gun, LT uses your character’s special attack, LB uses your character’s traversal power (e.g. grappling hook), Y switches between unlocked characters, and holding X uses your healing items that replenish at each save point.

First impressions weren’t that great between the twinstick jumping, the hold-to-heal pet peeve that makes you unable to do anything else, and the limited-ammo-clips pet peeve that forces you to stop shooting every five seconds so you can “reload,” but the game makes up for it as you progress by having challenging level design and generally fair attack patterns. That said, some bosses have attacks that’ll catch you off guard and kinda do require some memorization to get past, and the increasing damage of purchasable guns results in bosses having more and more HP, effectively meaning you have to keep buying the new guns to get a decent difficulty curve (and some of the guns you can buy are so short-range that it doesn’t feel like they were built for this game), but everything surrounding those issues is done well enough that the overall product is enjoyable.

The metroidvania design is also done well. Sure, it has the usual “late-game power needed to get secret in early-game area, so you’re never sure if it’s worth going down this optional path yet,” but even in the rare instances where you do hit a dead-end like that, there’s usually some other item or upgrade you can get in that area with what you have. Unfortunately, the game has so many different….let’s say “currencies” that you aren’t always able to use what you find. For example, you can find equip-able power-ups, and you need a battery for each extra powerup you want to equip. Fine so far, but each powerup also has an assigned “tier,” and no matter how many batteries you have, you can only equip one power-up per tier. In other words, if you go left at the bottom of the forest in early-game and hit the dead-end that requires wall-jumping, you do get a power-up for your efforts of going down that side path, but if it isn’t better than all three of the other tier-one powerups you’ve gotten, you’re never gonna use it anyway. Between stuff like that and the fact that there’s often only one fast-travel point per zone, it all combines to discourage exploration more and more, even though you can tell the devs tried to avoid that.

Overall, despite some hiccups every now and then, I do think the game is worth getting when it’s on sale.

I finally stumbled across another free game that’s worth playing:

• Super Beast Hunt
  

  12 hours playtime

  no achievements

Platformer. Standard left/right movement and jump, X does a short-range punch, B shoots a long-range projectile (costs ammo but quickly refills over a few seconds), and R does a dash move that lets you go through hazards. Movement does have a bit of momentum, but besides that, controls are responsive and intuitive (though you might get shoot and dash mixed up at first). You also get a couple extra mechanics as you progress, like pushing down to do a ground-pound. My only issue here is that, sometimes, a mechanic doesn’t get used much for a while, so you forget about it when it needs to be used again, such as running (hold R) or how you can still bounce on rocks by punching them or dashing into them instead of only being able to do a ground-pound on top of them to bounce.

Level design is also really good. 20 levels may not seem like much, but they’re pretty meaty while still having frequent checkpoints so you don’t have to redo too much after dying. Plus, there are several optional levels, including Challenge levels that have redesigned rooms from each world to make them harder. You unlock these levels by collecting coins or hitting a special switch in the main levels, but you don’t have to worry about them being hidden too well; even before I bought the Coin Radar, I always managed to find every coin and switch on my first run through (except the first coin in level 3-1, whose path I spotted on my second go–again, without the radar). Plus, it’s always obvious which split-path will lead to the coin/switch due to said path being blatantly more difficult (such as a flat path vs. a trail of apples you need to melee-attack-bounce across).

The only issue here is that the game isn’t always good at conveying information to the player. Some walls you can wall-jump on whereas some you can’t, but the distinction isn’t always clear, especially in world 3 (which is monochrome). I kept thinking I needed to use a balloon to get the second coin in level 3-2, but it would always pop at the on/off electric barrier, even when the barrier was off. It took a couple deaths before I noticed the wall suddenly becomes wall-jump-able at that point, meaning I didn’t need the balloon at all. Plus, the Wild House (world 3 bonus level) has a section where you can “only dash”, except the second room of that section is extremely difficult to get through using only the dash move. Turns out, you’re also allowed bounce on objects with your melee attack while in midair (but not while standing on the ground; that mechanic was disabled like the others).

One last thing: sometimes, the difficulty goes overboard, but even here, you have a health bar that you can upgrade with in-game currency, so a few mistakes or cheap hits won’t always punish you (and there’s an Assist Mode, but I never used it; never had to).

Still, the game is pretty good overall–especially since it’s free–so I highly recommend it.

I’ve got a few more free games to recommend:

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VANTAGE MASTER ONLINE: Turn-based tactics, free download on Falcom’s own website. It has an offline single-player campaign, but despite varied level design, it’s extremely obvious that the maps are built around multiplayer (which can also be done offline, by the way), resulting in the difficulty curve being wonky and certain mechanics not being made clear. Some levels are so hard, you’ll swear the only way to beat them is to get lucky, then they’ll immediately be followed by levels you’ll beat on your first try. Also, some cutscene text doesn’t display properly on modern computers, but it’s nothing important. Still, I did manage to beat the main campaign, so I can give it a tacit recommendation for any tactics fans reading this–especially if you know anyone you can play it with in multiplayer–but I admit I didn’t beat Expert Mode. I made it past a few levels, but the difficulty curve in Expert Mode is a result of your opponent having more and more max MP than you, meaning the only way to win is to know which low- to mid-level summons can hold their own against high-level summons, and this is something the main game absolutely does not prepare you for (and no, type-weaknesses aren’t a surefire bet for this). I didn’t feel like doing a free battle just to chart combat results for each possible matchup, so I stopped playing.

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ISLETS: Metroidvania, went free on Epic a while back. I’m not the biggest metroidvania fan due to the backtracking and tendency for bland level design, and there are moments in this game where you might end up fighting your way to a progression roadblock and be forced to double-back, but the game does start to pick up after a while. Some bosses have a cheap attack or two that’ll catch you off guard on your first try and require memorization to avoid damage, but they’re mostly fine. I do remember the final boss taking things a bit too far, though. The game’s base price of $20 is also a bit much, but if you got it when it was free on Epic, it’s definitely worth a playthrough.

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IFRIT: SHMUP, free download on Zac Soft’s own website (LZH files can be opened with 7zip) (English patch here). If you have a high-refresh-rate monitor, you’ll need to turn on VSYNC in the options so the game doesn’t run too fast. The level design is solid and the game saves after each level, so if you’re having trouble, you know you’ll be able to try again with a fresh set of 3 lives. The third level arguably gets too crowded with asteroids, but that’s its only real issue. Once you get past that level…you’ve beaten the game, but you can keep going for another loop where enemies shoot more projectiles. I thought it’d be like Gradius Rebirth where there’d be an ending after the second loop, but the game instead started a third loop that didn’t seem all that different from the second loop, so I decided I had beaten the game and stopped playing. Still, it’s a pretty good little game, if a bit derivative, and a nice change of pace from all those SHMUPs that arbitrarily decide you have to start the whole game over if you lose too many times. It’s worth checking out both if you like SHMUPs and if you haven’t tried one yet and are curious about them.

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ORBOX C: Ice-sliding-style block puzzle, free on Flashpoint because it’s an Adobe Flash game. It may take a while for the challenge to pick up, but it does manage to have a bunch of tricky puzzles. Besides that, the only issue are the time-bombs that count down in real-time instead of per-move, making certain levels more action-oriented than puzzle-oriented, but it’s still not too bad. The only part that really bothered me is how the game introduces a bunch of different types of objectives, such as “break all the ice blocks,” but only has ONE level with ice blocks where you don’t have to do that (and it’s in late-game, too). I spent way too long trying to figure out how I was supposed to break them all before I happened to glance at the HUD and noticed it wasn’t among the list of required objectives. Still, the game is overall pretty good, especially for a free game, so I definitely recommend trying it out.

The original Orbox is just okay, though it also has plenty of tricky puzzles, and I’m yet to play Orbox B. Both are also free on Flashpoint, by the way.

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JACK THE REAPER DEMO: Platformer, and this is the main reason I decided to come back and make another post. See, when I went to check if the full game came out (it didn’t and never will, unfortunately), I happened to notice the demo’s original download link on TIGSource Forums had died and that at least one person was asking for it, so I decided to reupload it for that user and anyone else who was interested. Problem is, when I tried to play it again afterward, the game started crashing each time it loaded a level, which didn’t happen before. I tried a bunch of stuff (starting a new game, not skipping cutscenes, etc.), but the only thing that finally got it somewhat working was re-extracting the exact same files I had zipped and uploaded, unmodified, into a different folder, but even then: it wouldn’t load music or my save data, so I had to beat the whole game in one sitting (additional re-extraction attempts of THE EXACT SAME FILES resulted in the earlier crashing happening again). I’m hoping whatever the problem is, it’s on my end and the game still works for you, because this game doesn’t deserve to become lost media. Do let me know if you can start playing a level without the game crashing, because this has been eating me up inside for the past couple days.

Anyway, standard left/right movement and jump, and you attack with a short-range scythe that has a brief-but-noticeable delay between attacks (which is especially irritating during bosses that make you wait for their weak point to be revealed). However, some enemies drop bubbles that you can collect to change your attack (many of which let you attack much more rapidly, thankfully). It’s not unlike Kirby’s copy abilities, and in fact, one of the upgrades you unlock lets you equip two powers at once for a new combined power, similar to Kirby 64. The soundtrack–which you can listen to externally with PXTone–is also reminiscent of Kirby and is pretty good (only a few duds in the mix despite 53 unique tracks). You also have a dodge button (for around half a second, you’re locked in place and become invincible), which the dev pleads with you not to forget about…because its rarely useful. There are a few times (mostly boss fights) where you HAVE to use the dodge move to avoid damage, but each instance where dodging is required is separated by about a dozen levels where dodging isn’t remotely worthwhile, so yeah, you WILL forget about it and wonder what you’re expected to do.

Level design is generally pretty good and varied, but there are some moments where the quality dips. Notably, there are a few places that are just flat stretches with enemies, and when an enemy explodes on death, they can briefly obscure other enemies. Not too hard if you happen to have the shield power, but it’s a mess without it. On that note, it feels like a lot of the game just wasn’t designed around NOT having a power and needing to rely on your default scythe. For the most part, it doesn’t take long until you kill an enemy that gives you another power, but it can be quite hard to figure out how to avoid enemy attacks while you get there. For example, it’s one thing to have that early level where you need to use the speed-up power to get over those first few walls; that part’s fine, but some levels have short hallways where you can’t jump over the enemies’ projectiles, so there’s no way to avoid getting hit if you don’t happen to have the shield ability–oh wait, I forgot about the dodge move again; nevermind. That said, there’s one part where fireballs descend from above every so often, and you have to wait under yellow platforms to avoid them (you might also be able to use the dodge move, IDK)…but on top of said yellow platforms not exactly standing out too well, there are also flame maidens that pop out of pipes to block you for a second or two, and if they desync with the sky fireballs, you might be forced to take a hit to progress. There’s also one brief vertical shaft where you have to use your hover power to stay on an upward-moving gust-orb-platform thing, but the hazards in the shaft seem placed haphazardly, and their movements can easily result in patterns you can’t avoid (and I don’t know if you can dodge past them, either, due to hovering being required).

Oh, and the underwater level could’ve been clearer on the fact that you have to collect a few things before it’ll let you progress, or even attack again (not to mention what exactly you need to look for since the tiny sparkle effect looks more like visual flair than a clue).

The game opens with a message talking about how it’s hard, but as stated before: as long as you keep a power or two with you, the levels aren’t too difficult and are pretty fun for the most part. Even if you die and lose your powers against a kinda-cheap boss, you can always go back to a shop and spend very little in-game currency to get a power or two back, and that’s not counting other items like revive-on-death and heal-yourself-five-times items, which are more expensive but still cost way less than how much money you’ll have (the actually-expensive scythe-upgrades aren’t worth it because they’re also temporary). Instead, you’ll find out that the game’s opening message is referring to artificial difficulty: you have a set number of lives and can only get more by collecting enough of the gems that drop from defeated enemies; if you run out of lives, you’re sent back to the previous auto-save point, which can sometimes be one or two levels before the one you died at! I only got Game Over once, but having to redo the motorcycle level and the first ruins level just to get back to the chase segment where I had fallen into an instant-death pit four times…wasn’t very fun. Plus, levels themselves can be a touch on the long side, and they only have one checkpoint at best (many have zero checkpoints).

…Okay, so I’m still not great at illustrating a game’s positive aspects, and I’ll admit I’d be more hesitant to recommend this game if it cost money, but still: the amount of content you get in what was originally a free demo is unparalleled, and while there are a bunch of problems, the game is also very polished (albeit unstable) and has plenty of good levels as well. If you like platformers and can get the game working, I definitely say give it a try.

Oh cool, I didn’t get kicked for inactivity yet. Let’s see if I can keep it that way.

Roguelite. Left/right move, A double-jumps, X attacks, Y uses your equipped magic attack, B dashes, R interacts (when applicable), and L uses a healing potion. This takes the Rogue Legacy approach of haivng pre-designed rooms chosen at random instead of true procedural generation, but keep in mind the game is still very linear: levels are never much bigger than 5x5 rooms, and you’re always looking for the specific door-room that leads to the next level. You can buy permanent upgrades and rescue prisoners who will offer free equipment for the start of all your future runs, but besides that, this is one of those “back to the beginning” roguelites where you have to replay every level and boss to get back to where you were, and if you’ve never liked that, this game won’t change your mind. Technically, the game does have checkpoints, but you don’t get one until after beating the third boss…and it only lets you start future runs right after the first boss (same for beating the 4th to get a checkpoint right after the 2nd), so you still have to play 60% of the game in a row at minimum to beat the game.

However, while I really wasn’t a fan of the game’s checkpoint system, I should give it praise for getting almost everything else right, including stuff I haven’t seen another game get right in a long time. Controls are solid (there’s a bit of momentum when you stop, but the platforming challenges never get precise enough for it to be an issue), healing potions work instantly without interrupting you (no forced delay/movement-hinderances like Dark Souls, etc. have), and enemies/bosses are rather fairly designed so no matter how the RNG plays out with your equipment, you can always reliably take them down. I even beat the final boss the first time I made it there. Also, when you hit-stun an enemy, they actually stay hit-stunned as long as you keep up the pressure; no abrupt breaking out of it like I’ve seen other games do. But the part I really want to praise: you can walk forward while attacking! I can’t remember the last game of this ilk that actually lets you do this. In other words, if a hit-stunned enemy is about to be pushed out of your attack range before dying, you can just…move forward…without stopping your attacks. It’s beautiful. Sadly, you can’t dash out of your attack animations, but I guess nothing’s perfect.

Unfortunately, the game does have some of what would otherwise have been minor issues that–when combined with the checkpoint system–are gonna make you wanna prioritize health and defense upgrades before any others, assuming you don’t just give up outright. Hurtboxes for certain attacks can hang around just a bit longer than it looks like they should; some attacks (flying enemies preparing projectiles) have foreshadow animations that are so long, they loop back around to not having any; a few foreshadow animations can be ambiguous as to how the attack will play out, meaning you can’t really react to them on your first encounter; dark rooms make it harder to see certain projectiles or red light on the ground that indicates an attack coming from the floor; and of course, there’s my old pet peeve of level design needing to flatten itself out to accommodate the more hack-‘n’-slash-y enemies who aren’t really designed around you being able to take on more than one or two at a time, but the game still occasionally spawns incompatible ones in the same spot. Magic could help due to its range, but once your magic meter is empty, that’s it unless you stumble across low-spawn-rate magic potions or a magic-recharge station. On top of this, when you kill an enemy, you actually do have an extra delay added to that specific attack, which–depending on your equipment–absolutely means the difference between keeping the other nearby enemy hit-stunned or said enemy getting a hit off on you. The worst is when you finally make it to the fifth zone and encounter red-light areas that slow your movement. They’re not like water–you can still only double jump–but both horizontal and vertical movement is slowed greatly, making it (next to) impossible to avoid certain enemy attacks (particularly the ones that just summon hazards near you, regardless of your or their positions). Honestly, this issue by itself made me second-guess my recommendation.

Still, the game is pretty good overall if you don’t mind the game’s checkpoint system. If you like these types of roguelites, you’ll probably enjoy this game, too.

I looked through a bunch of the recent Next Fest demos, and here are the ones I found worth checking out:

Platformers:

Physics are kinda wonky sometimes (even getting me killed once), but the game shows promise.

Solid platformer. Doesn’t do much unique, but does it well. Almost flawless.

Killing enemies to charge the higher-jump is odd, but the teleport-gun has solid implementation.

Another quality title with a well-implemented gimmick. The escape level gets close to being too long without a checkpoint, though.

The wing-boost (midair-jump) takes some getting-used-to, but the demo only has four short levels, so you won’t. Still okay, though.

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SHMUPs:

Decent bullet hell, though the demo’s last boss started to breach unfair territory.

Bullet hell, but almost nothing is unfair (at least on Normal mode), and the demo has 13 two-phase bosses!

Promises different paths for each character, but the demo only has one level (the same for each one). It’s an okay level, though.

I decided to see what new prologues were out on Steam since last I checked, and I found a couple that were pretty fun:

• Dark Gravity: Prologue
  

  2 hours playtime

  no achievements

• BioGun: Clinical Trial
  

  2 hours playtime

  no achievements

Dark Gravity Prologue: SHMUP. Standard movement, RT shoots, RB toggles auto-fire, LT shoots your secondary weapon (has ammo but slowly refills when not in use), and the A button dodges. Most shot patterns can be avoided just fine with basic movement (at least on Normal mode), but there are still a few where you need to use the dodge button. Also, even after going through the tutorials, it’s easy to forget about your secondary weapon.

The prologue has four levels, but one of them is in a branching path, and the game won’t let you go back to the other level once you’ve made your choice; the only way to play the other one is if you start a new campaign and replay the first level again. You also get to see a preview of the main game’s campaign paths, which is how I know you have to play through half of the main game three times in order to unlock all the levels.

Once you do, though, you can play them in Single Mission mode in any order and on any difficulty, even if you only played the campaign on normal mode. That’s how I tried out hard mode: it has the same number of enemies in the same formations at the same locations, but they shoot more projectiles, requiring the dodge mechanic a lot more. Some levels also have an extra boss/phase at the end; level 1 and 2a were fine for the most part, but 2b’s additional boss had some cheap laser attacks, so I stopped playing when I lost there. Still, normal mode is worth playing through, so I can recommend it.

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BioGun Clinical Trial: Twin-stick Metroidvania. Left stick moves, right stick shoots, and LB jumps. As with any Metroidvania, you’ll get upgrades as you progress, such as dashing (RB), hovering (LT, but can be changed to the jump button in the options), and a stronger, longer-range gun that uses ammo (RT). The game has that “hold a button to heal after a delay” mechanic that I hate, and you can’t even move while healing unless you buy a specific upgrade and have it take up your lone upgrade slot (which can only be swapped out at save points). Once again, a game invents a problem and sells the solution instead of doing things right from the get-go. This type of stuff is why I’ll never understand the player-side popularity of RPG mechanics: pay-to-win was always its logical conclusion!

Level design is okay, though I could easily see the full version ending up as one of those games that doesn’t really have much of a difficulty curve. Enemies have fair attack patterns and no stage hazards will catch you off guard, but there weren’t many parts I had trouble with outside bosses, which can have some cheap hits (like the fish that’ll charge at you, even if you’re on the lower level where the ceiling is too low to jump over it). There’s even an optional boss placed before you get the long-range gun, and IIRC this part is right before a shaft that you can’t jump back up, so you can’t exactly go back for it afterward. Plus, the boss itself keeps spamming swarms of the bug enemies–too many to fight off and get many hits in before the next group spawn. Still, what’s here is fine for being free, so I think it’s worth checking out.

Just beat Ninja Senki (not DX, but the free original version), and it’s okay for a free platformer. Controls are fine and level design is decent for the most part, but the game can be pretty repetitive at times (literally using the exact same level chunk & enemy placement multiple times in a row), and level 8 has a bunch of cheap hits, partly because it introduces the three-bullet shooters (who are pretty much never used fairly) and partly because it’s the only one where getting hit by the boss is an instakill because you always get knocked into the pit. Honestly, although I haven’t played the DX version, it looks like it isn’t all that different from the free original, so I’d definitely recommend this one instead, which you can download here: https://ninja-senki.en.uptodown.com/windows/post-download/43818 Just know that it doesn’t save your progress, so you have to beat it in one sitting (it has infinite continues, though).

I also got this game as a gift a couple days ago:

• Mega Man 11
  

  5 hours playtime

  17 of 50 achievements

Besides typical Mega Man controls (jump, slide, charge shot), this platformer introduces the “gear system”: LB temporarily increases your attack power but using it too long weakens you and greatly lowers your fire-rate, and RB slows time down but also slows your own movement as well. As a result, it doesn’t really do anything to alleviate potential cheap hits because if you don’t have enough reaction time to hit the jump button or slide or whatever, you don’t have time to hit the time-slow button, either. Honestly, I forgot it was there most of the time, only remembering when I hit the wrong button while trying to switch weapons (mapped to LT and RT).

Level design is okay for the most part, but there were a few lapses in quality. One of the things Mega Man is known for is introducing new things safely, but Torch Man’s stage fails to do this twice. First of all, the teepees looks like background objects, so when you walk into the first one and take contact damage, you’ll shoot it down and see that no enemy comes out of it. A couple teepees later, you’ll jump up to a platform that’s only a few tiles wide and shoot the teepee down only for an enemy to spawn behind it and jump forward at you, hitting you again! At the very least, the first one should’ve had the enemy so the player knows to be on guard for the rest of them. In that same level are Mash Burners, which constantly shoot flames upward so you can’t get past them without killing them, which causes them to explode. That much is fine, but once again, shortly after they first show up, you’re placed on a small platform with one in front of you (after a drop so you can’t jump back), but the platform isn’t large enough to avoid getting hit by the enemy’s death explosion. It isn’t until several rooms later–past the halfway point–where the game has them walk into a pit and you realize shooting them just once turns their flames off without killing them (they die in only two shots). That would’ve been a good way to introduce them safely…if that had been how they were actually introduced!

Some of the bosses have issues as well. The first I noticed was the mini-boss in Block Man’s stage: it’s too long to jump over, so you have to find a safe zone, but the mini-boss’s four pieces fall in different, seemingly random positions on the screen each time. Even with the time slow power, I couldn’t figure out how I was supposed to avoid getting hit sometimes. The worst is probably Acid Man, though. See, all the Robot Masters get a pattern change when they get low on health, and what Acid Man does is: he dives under the arena where you can’t shoot him, sends a wave towards you that you need to jump over, then–as you’re jumping over the wave–he’ll jump out of the water and hover at the top of the screen (where your Mega Buster also can’t reach), then immediately shoot three shots at you in a row (which are super hard to dodge due to you being right next to the boss when it happens) before diving back under the arena (where–again–you can’t shoot him) and loop the pattern. The only reason I won is because I happened to have his weakness, which can hit him at the top of the screen; I’m pretty sure he’s actually impossible with just the Mega Buster alone.

The Wily fortress was pretty disappointing. Only four levels, and two of them barely have any level to go with their bosses. In fact, the boss-refight stage doesn’t have an exclusive boss (it just ends once the duplicate Robot Masters are defeated), and the first level just reuses the Yellow Devil again (who has no weakness in this game; the wiki says its weakness is the bomb weapon, but I used that against the boss and it only dealt one point of damage!). The first Wily stage also has a lot more background details, making the transparent 8-way-shooting enemies very difficult to notice before they pop out and attack, knocking you into a pit.

However, the most disappointing part of the game are the challenges. All of them (except four) either recycle the main game’s levels with next to no changes, or they recycle the main game’s bosses in some form of boss rush. Worse, 3/4 of the non-recycled challenges are just high-score minigames (one of which is unintuitive because how are you supposed to figure out what the normal enemies’ weaknesses are besides trial and error?), and the final one–the only one that’s worth playing due to being an actual new level–is way too long considering it has no checkpoints (and on top of that, it also ends up recycling the main game’s bosses with no changes!). It’s been a while since I played Mega Man 10, but I distinctly remember that game’s challenges were unique levels. Heck, even Mega Man: Powered Up, for all its flaws, at least had the decency to make most of its challenges original levels, even if a lot of them also have the same checkpoint issue as this game’s lone extra level.

Overall, this one’s hard to recommend. There’s a lot of good things here, but it also has a bunch of problems–some of which run counter to what Mega Man is known for. It especially doesn’t help the game’s case when there are so many free games doing the same thing better (like the Mega Man DOS Remake). The lowest it’s gone for is $10, which is still a bit of a stretch IMO considering the challenges are less than an afterthought (and apparently, hard mode barely changes the level design, unlike Mega Man 10! That was something I liked about that game, and they did away with it here!).