It's got to the point now where I don't think 2D, low-pixel games ever went away. They reached their heyday in the early-90's, and returned in the late-2000s to haunt us once more with limited continues, awkward keyboard controls, and insane difficulty.
Whilst games such as Shovel Knight take the retro sensibilities of 2D games but update them to fit confortably within the 21st century by actually having a story, a lot of games seek to just remind us of things. There are a wealth of 2D fighting games to remind us of Street Fighter 2, which is odd because Street Fighter 2 has been ported to every device in the world. I could probably run it on my digital watch. There's also Double Dragon, which has been made and remade more times than a major superhero franchise...yet still the plot is: "A woman has been punched in the stomach and kidnapped." This too has spawned a wave of arcade-style 'beat-em-ups' to fleece money which we don't have because we don't have arcades any more because they were expensive and really don't hold up these days.
From this obsession with a bygone era comes the game I should probably start reviewing now. If you don't know, Kung Fury is a crowdfunded 30 min movie available on YouTube. It's a parody. Specifically, a parody of the 80's - so it's already more popular than a cat doing a funny dance. Thankfully, the movie is genuinely funny with its absurd humour that pleasingly reminds me of Far Cry: Blood Dragon. You can watch it right now for free, and experience the head-scratching euphoria yourself.
Done that? Liked it? Right, so you'd think a game based off-of it would be awesome, right? Well...um...
I should get this out of the way right now: the game is only £1.50 on Steam. It costs as much as going to the toilet three times in central London. You could probably pay for this game by looking for spare change around the sofa. I managed to get this game by selling a load of trading cards and then using my Steam wallet funds to buy this. It's really not asking for much and it's clearly not trying to take the world by storm.
Then again: why not try to take the world by storm? I bought Portal for £1.60 and it's one of the few things that restores my faith in humanity. It takes effort to make games, and when it finally makes it to the Steam Store then you've worked hard either slowly ascending the ladder or elaborately conning everyone. You've made it this far, so why not do more? You're in the recording studio already, so why not record Stairway To Heaven instead of a thirty second demo clip?
I should probably get into the nitty-gritty of the game itself. You have two buttons: Punch left, and punch right. Thats it. You can't dodge or manuvre around. You just mash two buttons. Two mashes performs a combo which often doesn't hit anything, and just one mash makes you glide forward - though it never seems to glide enough to hit the enemy, giving them a quick window to hit you. I'm surprised this hasn't been ported to mobile yet, because it's mind-numbing simplicity would be perfect there.
The level infinitely loops. You won't find yourself exploring any of the colourful locations from the movie such as the Viking age, or the Nazi base. After a while the enemies become more advanced, and you see things like the killer arcade machine, but there's not going to be a boss battle because this game doesn't have any way you can engadge with a boss. All you can do is hit two buttons.
Oh, and whilst it's funny the first time when you lose and see that the highscores are all ridiulously high...eventually this makes you want to stop playing. There is no reward for pushing forward. You're never going to advance to the next level, or reach a 'you win' screen, or even log a high-score. This wouldn't actually work as a mobile game because they're all about contant rewards that encourage you to keep playing whilst your life passes by unfufilled.
Whats on offer is very polished, however. The animations look great, the soundtrack is nice, and the game feels authentic. One feature I really like is that when you pause the game, a false-error message pops up. There are a few little touches like that which make me feel the same exhilaration I did watching the movie this game was based off-of.
That being said, I really wish there was a way to disable that screen filter. I know it's supposed to look like you're playing this on an actual arcade machine...but I'm not, so can I turn it off? Mass Effect let me remove that pointless film grain effect, and Spec Ops: The Line's color filters were entirely optional. I never get it when games ask: "Do you want the picture to look worse?" No! Do you know how much this rig cost me?
This is a common problem that plagues the majority of indie games: it doesn't really do anything you can't already get from either games released 20 to 30 years ago, or current games. I think Westerado was only made because Rockstar still hasn't ported Red Dead Redemption to PC yet, and need I remind you of the countless games with 'zombie' in the title that somehow got through Steam Greenlight. Also, must I really bring up Goat Simulator - which innovatively parodies terrible simulation games by being a terrible simulation game.
But perhaps the biggest letdown of this game is that doesn't have any of the humour from the movie. When you start off, you see other characters from the film, but they're just standing there. There aren't any funny death animations, or silly sound effects, or the option to play as anyone else besides Mr Fury himself. I want to play as Hackerman, blasting everyone away with his Commadore 64! I want to play as one of the Vikings, shooting everyone with a chaingun! I want to play as Thor, zapping everyone with lighting! I want to play as Tricericop, because he's Tricericop! Why has this game taken something as insane as Kung Fury and given me all the blandest parts to play around with?
Whilst I feel the need to support the independents, in some way I feel that even for £1.50 this isn't really worth it. You can go online and play The Room: The Game for free, and that game gives you at least 20 mins of enjoyable content. You can play Wolfenstein 3D in-browser or you can emulate Double Dragon - both of which are free and filled with more content than this. After ten minuites of Kung Fury I was already fed up. OK, so this would work well as an arcade machine; but it's not an arcade machine. It's a PC game. More needed.
