![]() Again, this is entirely on me, but I’ve always struggled with moves that require directional inputs oftentimes, I overcorrect and in the case of Cyber Shadow, wind up dashing when I don’t mean to. Unfortunately for me, one of these moves is the parry, which requires you to press a directional button when whatever the projectile is about to hit you to negate damage and reflect it back. But in the case of Cyber Shadow, it absolutely demands that you use every single tool at your disposal. I enjoy the genre a lot, with recent entries like the Azure Striker Gunvolt franchise and, of course, Shovel Knight Treasure Trove providing me with plenty of entertainment. ![]() The only choice I had was trying to (slowly) swim away and take damage from the electricity, or jump out of the water to be hit by the enemies, which stunned me briefly, then sent me back down into the water.Īnd here’s the thing: my lack of enjoyment, for the most part, entirely stems from the fact that I am very, very bad at these kinds of action platforming games. And the biggest problem for me personally is that the margin for error is so, so slight that more times than not, one mistake would instantly kill me and send me back to the last checkpoint, whether it’s because I fell into some spikes or because I fell into a pool of electrified water and was simultaneously swarmed by enemies. ![]() Death carries no other penalty than sending you back to the last checkpoint, but this is exacerbated later when checkpoints become fewer and fewer, and you must overcome more and more instant death obstacles. It’s not uncommon near the end of the game for the player to navigate room after room filled with insta-kill spikes or bottomless pits, which means they have to have pixel-perfect button pressing and spacing to succeed. This is just as well since most enemies go down in a few swings of your sword but combined with the absolutely fiendish level design of the late game, enemies that are easy enough on their own turn into challenging and often infuriating obstacles. A flying enemy is moreso there to challenge your reflexes and your ability to process information than it is to present you with combat. Like old school platformers such as Ninja Gaiden and Castlevania, enemies are more extensions of the environment than combat encounters. But not only was I more in tune with what the game would throw at me, but I had better movement and combat options available to me, and yes, it should be said that once you have all of your abilities, you truly do feel like a badass ninja warrior, leaping around, bouncing off of enemies with your sword and dashing through them after hitting the sprint button.īut it was near the end of the game that I found myself not really enjoying the game’s obstacle courses. Sure, returning to earlier levels later in the game saw me able to rip through them even though they seemed insurmountable early on. As I stated in my previous article, the game is not shy about throwing the player in the deep end at any given moment. It required me to think about how I would approach a given encounter.Ĭyber Shadow does a lot of similar stuff with its approach to difficulty. It placed me in the mindset of a skilled but fragile warrior. The difficulty felt empowering and rewarding. A boss I might have spent hours on suddenly went down in a matter of minutes, with them barely landing a scratch on me. The reason I loved Sekiro so much is that, once everything clicked-and my brain shifted to the right gear for a given combat challenge-what once seemed like a cheap, impossible fight turned into a white knuckle game of tug-of-war between me and the enemy AI. ![]() I enjoy being challenged, and for me, the challenge comes from the knowledge that I can succeed. Hotline Miami is one of my favorite games of the 2010s, and the extremely difficult Sekiro: Shadows Die Twicewas my personal game of the year in 2019. The biggest question for me was something I struggled with, though was Am I still enjoying myself? Were my repeated deaths from one mistake adding up to a satisfying, enjoyable experience for me personally? And like many action platformers, the difficulty ramps up to reflect the wide array of options you have available to you. Curiously, it’s over halfway through the game that you have a completed repertoire you can wall jump, double jump, send projectiles flying back at robots in the form of blue energy, you can throw explosive kunai, and more. ![]() In my day 1 review of Mechanical Head Studios’ Cyber Shadow, I stated that my primary concern was how it would evolve the movement mechanics of the ninja you play as. ![]()
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