Life on Earth: Reimagined
released on Dec 31, 2023
Reviews View More
(beat on 2024-02-12; did a 1CC on 02-13)
Life on Earth: Reimagined is a spinoff/prequel (as far as I can tell) to Kai Magazine Software's other game, Life on Mars. I have not played Life on Mars - I personally avoided picking it up because it's a Metroidvania, and I don't personally care much for that genre. Life on Earth, however, has a very different type of experience it's going for - that of a straightforward, stage-based 2D action-platformer.
Life on Earth: Reimagined's store description describes it as a mix of Contra, Shinobi III, and Rolling Thunder... and yeah, that's pretty accurate. Life on Earth feels specifically like it's trying to meld two different sorts of sidescrollers together - the frantic run-and-gun shooting of Contra, with the more deliberately-paced, mechanics-heavy nature of Shinobi. Those might sound incompatible, but to the developers' credit, I think they do a pretty good job of fusing the two together.
The protagonist you control, a questionably-attired woman named Dr. Zhira Kenthara, carries a gun, that functions as a standard semi-auto rifle, just like in Contra. This default gun has unlimited ammo. You can also pick up ammo for one of 3 other weapon types - a rapid-fire machine gun, a spread-firing shotgun, and an explosive grenade launcher that fires with a bit of an arc. These guns do have ammo that you need to maintain (unless playing on one of the specialty difficulty settings), so the game encourages you to frequently switch weapon types (by tapping the start button; holding the start button pauses), and save your ammo for when you really need it.
Beyond the guns, you also have a separate attack button, which always unleashes a strike at melee range. This can deal good damage, but its horizontal range is (understandably) a bit limited, so it can be risky to rely too heavily on. Like Shinobi, you can also do melee attacks with your regular fire button, if an enemy is close enough for you to do so. Other miscellaneous mechanics include (but are not limited to) dive-kicking (a classic Shinobi III move - and which can actually let you climb walls here, if you practice with them! Good stuff), and also tapping left or right twice to dash (attacking while dashing does a lunging strike, like in Shinobi III). You can also hold up to jump higher.
When it comes down to it, I do think Life on Earth: Reimagined is generally fun to play. I have not played the original Life on Earth for the MSX line of computers, so I cannot compare the two. But as a standalone experience, this is pretty solid. It's also fairly forgiving overall, given that you have infinite continues as well as a relatively lengthy health bar on most difficulties - the developers outright designed this game with the intent of encouraging players to 1CC it, and as I've personally 1CCed it myself, I can affirm that it's very doable! There are some parts of the game that are particularly brutal, however. As an example - about a third of the way in, there's an auto-scrolling section as you escape an exploding building, which is very rough, as one mistake can kill you, and your default run speed is not fast enough to outrun the explosion, which means you need to dash as frequently as possible. Pretty nasty!
I do think this game could use a bit more polish. While the art design is generally appealing, the stages don't do a good job of distinguishing which elements are part of the foreground or background, and it can be very easy to not realize that a platform is actually there. One particular stage later on has several platforms, that are all the same color as the wall/ground, and you basically just kinda have to know they're there ahead of time (or be willing to jump in various directions randomly) in order to get yourself across them. At least they don't have a bottomless pit there! But I do think the stages could utilize color more effectively, to make such elements easier to see.
I also think the pacing is... a bit weird? I do think this does a pretty good job of mixing disparate influences together overall, but it's not without its faults. Sometimes it feels like a bit of a slog to clear enough enemies away to safely proceed, and it can feel a bit awkward to shift gears back and forth between how you approach a combat encounter (switching between Contra-style “blow shit up” and Shinobi-style “take down enemies methodically” approaches), in order to skirt by as unscathed as possible.
The writing could use some work, too. The English script is... serviceable, but pretty rough. There are several typos and grammatical errors, and the localization in general feels kinda stiff and clunky. I can understand the story possibly being an afterthought (I'm assuming it was written after the fact, to tie the stages together), but it's pretty funny to see Zhira consistently fail to successfully communicate with anyone to explain what exactly is going on, or how she's not the mass murderer that she's been accused of being in the intro... as she then goes on to mass-murder a ton of people lol.
All in all, Life on Earth: Reimagined is pretty laser-focused on being a specific thing - it's a 2D action game that takes influence from multiple games the development team liked, while featuring a hot girl character to play as and maybe ogle. I don't think there's anything wrong with that, when it comes down to it - it feels like they made the game they wanted to make, and I'm happy for them. I think there's some room for improvement, but I generally enjoyed my time playing through this, and I think it was worth purchasing - I may have reason to check out Life on Mars as a result of having played this one, it so happens. I do hope they can eventually release a ROM of this digitally however - not a huge fan of having to pull out and hook up my Genesis just to play this game. Let me play this on MiSTer!
Life on Earth: Reimagined is a spinoff/prequel (as far as I can tell) to Kai Magazine Software's other game, Life on Mars. I have not played Life on Mars - I personally avoided picking it up because it's a Metroidvania, and I don't personally care much for that genre. Life on Earth, however, has a very different type of experience it's going for - that of a straightforward, stage-based 2D action-platformer.
Life on Earth: Reimagined's store description describes it as a mix of Contra, Shinobi III, and Rolling Thunder... and yeah, that's pretty accurate. Life on Earth feels specifically like it's trying to meld two different sorts of sidescrollers together - the frantic run-and-gun shooting of Contra, with the more deliberately-paced, mechanics-heavy nature of Shinobi. Those might sound incompatible, but to the developers' credit, I think they do a pretty good job of fusing the two together.
The protagonist you control, a questionably-attired woman named Dr. Zhira Kenthara, carries a gun, that functions as a standard semi-auto rifle, just like in Contra. This default gun has unlimited ammo. You can also pick up ammo for one of 3 other weapon types - a rapid-fire machine gun, a spread-firing shotgun, and an explosive grenade launcher that fires with a bit of an arc. These guns do have ammo that you need to maintain (unless playing on one of the specialty difficulty settings), so the game encourages you to frequently switch weapon types (by tapping the start button; holding the start button pauses), and save your ammo for when you really need it.
Beyond the guns, you also have a separate attack button, which always unleashes a strike at melee range. This can deal good damage, but its horizontal range is (understandably) a bit limited, so it can be risky to rely too heavily on. Like Shinobi, you can also do melee attacks with your regular fire button, if an enemy is close enough for you to do so. Other miscellaneous mechanics include (but are not limited to) dive-kicking (a classic Shinobi III move - and which can actually let you climb walls here, if you practice with them! Good stuff), and also tapping left or right twice to dash (attacking while dashing does a lunging strike, like in Shinobi III). You can also hold up to jump higher.
When it comes down to it, I do think Life on Earth: Reimagined is generally fun to play. I have not played the original Life on Earth for the MSX line of computers, so I cannot compare the two. But as a standalone experience, this is pretty solid. It's also fairly forgiving overall, given that you have infinite continues as well as a relatively lengthy health bar on most difficulties - the developers outright designed this game with the intent of encouraging players to 1CC it, and as I've personally 1CCed it myself, I can affirm that it's very doable! There are some parts of the game that are particularly brutal, however. As an example - about a third of the way in, there's an auto-scrolling section as you escape an exploding building, which is very rough, as one mistake can kill you, and your default run speed is not fast enough to outrun the explosion, which means you need to dash as frequently as possible. Pretty nasty!
I do think this game could use a bit more polish. While the art design is generally appealing, the stages don't do a good job of distinguishing which elements are part of the foreground or background, and it can be very easy to not realize that a platform is actually there. One particular stage later on has several platforms, that are all the same color as the wall/ground, and you basically just kinda have to know they're there ahead of time (or be willing to jump in various directions randomly) in order to get yourself across them. At least they don't have a bottomless pit there! But I do think the stages could utilize color more effectively, to make such elements easier to see.
I also think the pacing is... a bit weird? I do think this does a pretty good job of mixing disparate influences together overall, but it's not without its faults. Sometimes it feels like a bit of a slog to clear enough enemies away to safely proceed, and it can feel a bit awkward to shift gears back and forth between how you approach a combat encounter (switching between Contra-style “blow shit up” and Shinobi-style “take down enemies methodically” approaches), in order to skirt by as unscathed as possible.
The writing could use some work, too. The English script is... serviceable, but pretty rough. There are several typos and grammatical errors, and the localization in general feels kinda stiff and clunky. I can understand the story possibly being an afterthought (I'm assuming it was written after the fact, to tie the stages together), but it's pretty funny to see Zhira consistently fail to successfully communicate with anyone to explain what exactly is going on, or how she's not the mass murderer that she's been accused of being in the intro... as she then goes on to mass-murder a ton of people lol.
All in all, Life on Earth: Reimagined is pretty laser-focused on being a specific thing - it's a 2D action game that takes influence from multiple games the development team liked, while featuring a hot girl character to play as and maybe ogle. I don't think there's anything wrong with that, when it comes down to it - it feels like they made the game they wanted to make, and I'm happy for them. I think there's some room for improvement, but I generally enjoyed my time playing through this, and I think it was worth purchasing - I may have reason to check out Life on Mars as a result of having played this one, it so happens. I do hope they can eventually release a ROM of this digitally however - not a huge fan of having to pull out and hook up my Genesis just to play this game. Let me play this on MiSTer!