Reboots of decades old games generally go one of two ways. They are either cash-in’s or they are actually surprisingly decent, blending a mix of old school nostalgia with up to date trends. When the reboot of the arcade classic and NES game Strider was originally announced there was cause for concern; could unproven developer Double Helix, and Capcom’s Osaka stuido pull of a reboot of a series much beloved by diehards, but generally long forgotten? Can Metroidvania games still be popular in the current market of open world, set piece laden action games?
Then out came Double Helix’s other project, a reboot of the Killer Instinct franchise as a launch title for Xbox One. Despite lacking in a few areas, the game was generally very well received and one thing was abundantly clear from the start. Double Helix cared about the source material. Anticipation began to rise for the Strider reboot, with fans eager to see how the developer would approach the series.
Once again, the first thing long time fans of the series will notice is the love given by the developers to the original games. Many of the quirks that made Strider so beloved are present and correct. From his awkward cartwheel jumps, to the slide attack, frantic swordplay and iconic red scarf, everything about the game mechanics will put a big grin on the faces of veterans of the series. The storytelling also adopts a largely old school approach in that there pretty much isn’t one. You get dropped into a world with a vague goal to kill the dictatorial leader and that is pretty much it. There are no drawn out cut-scenes, no subplots. Just you, and a whole lot of enemies to mow through. Many will like this minimalist approach as it constantly keeps the action up and never takes you out of battles for extended periods, however, gamers who need deep context and meaning to their actions may want to look elsewhere.
The game looks nice without ever really looking beautiful. Sporting cel-shaded aesthetics, Strider Hiryu himself is colourful, vibrant and wonderfully animated. However, there are too many identikit enemies and overall the game world lacks a certain charm to it that the original games in the series had in spades. The soundtrack is equally sporadic, mixing pleasantly old school sound effects with a dull, virtually non-existent, soundtrack and voice acting that is, at best, poor.
Strider plays silky smooth, even when moving at breakneck speeds during the most chaotic battles the game can throw at you. The frame rate never dropped and at no point did the game crash back to the dashboard, an issue that has plagued many of Xbox One’s downloadable titles since the consoles launch.
The game is so easy to pick up and play that it does not bother with a tutorial. It simply dumps you down on the map and lets you work things out for yourself. It is a refreshing approach compared to so many triple A titles nowadays where virtually half of the game feels like a glorified teaching lesson in how to play it. You will immediately familiarise yourself with the jump and slash buttons and that’s all you need to know, at least at the start of the game all you have to worry about is running forward and carving up the generic foes you stumble across.
That is until you get to the games many boss battles. These pop up frequently and virtually each one rewards Strider with a new ability that is then immediately useful both in combat and traversing the game environment. Cleverly, or annoying, depending on your opinion, much of the game world is cut off until you unlock the later upgrades, meaning backtracking is a frequent occurrence. This, combined with the fact that the locations lack variety, gives a unnecessary feeling of repetition that could have been sooner avoided.
Speaking of the boss battles, like much of the game, they have a distinctly old-school feel. Each boss has a pattern that must be learned and perfected in order to stand a chance at victory. They are deliberately hard, even on the easiest difficulty setting and death will come frequently, meaning frustration can soon kick in. However, frustration will give way to jubilation when you finally manage to best the one that has been giving you a hard time. Annoyingly, however, like many games that released around the same time as the original Strider, it has the tendency to introduce a minor bosses,then ten minutes later you are fighting two of them, plus other enemies simultaneously. This can lead to many of the boss battles, losing their excitement when you know down the line the game will throw more of them at you in increasingly ridiculous numbers.
Ultimately, Strider is another successful reboot by the Double Helix team. They have clearly studied the source product meticulously and really care about their work, and this comes through in the final product. However a lot of what holds the game back is the same issues that affect the Metroidvania genre on the whole. Frustrating difficulty curves, identikit enemies and lots of backtracking make the game more of a slog than it needs to be. Thankfully, the perfectly drip fed unlocks and abilities mean there is always a reason to keep plugging away and the fact the game loads up instantly and features very few load screens means you can always dip back in for a quick play. Strider is refreshingly old-school, for better and for worse and if you are a fan of the originals or fancy something a bit different it comes strongly recommended, just expect a bit of frustration along the way.
Strider is available now on the PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Xbox 360 and Xbox One.
© 2014, zero1gaming.com. All rights reserved. On republishing this article your must provide a link to this original post
•
