done everything in this game apart from the grannie missions, this game has tons of issues. horrendous enemy placement, a lot of the same gameplay etc. it's good though, got great art and the music bops but other than that holy shit this game is too difficult sometimes.

edit 17/05/2023: beaten all the content in the game now, something that helped me is that the spike hitbox is really forgiving and a lot of the time you can stand on them pretty much.
rating still stays the same, didn't have the most fun with it but it's over now.

This game somehow manages to be really frustrating yet so utterly lame at the same time. It's style and presentation is so completely unremarkable. It feels like it's trying to do a "throwback to the retro eras of gaming" thing and does it in the most generic way possible, and thus fails to do what made people enjoy those games in the first place. A good way to describe it is to think of how a TV show or something would make up a fake game for a character to play in a scene with the little knowledge the writers had on video games as a whole and then imagine that game actually being a real thing. The actual gameplay itself is where the frustrating aspects of the game come through. It's sluggish as hell, which doesn't combine well with the barebones and haphazardly designed stages that have no consideration of how the game plays, and as such makes the platforming really boring normally, and really annoying later on with levels that have multiple mechanics going on at once. Those mechanics can be particularly annoying, like the flickering platforms, the game's addiction with several kinds of instant death traps, and the goddamn ice physics which, if the jetpack didn't reset your momentum, would've made certain stages near unplayable, the list goes on. Said mechanics also suffer badly from all of the flaws of the general level design, in that they don't even feel like they had much thought put into them when used in the levels which makes most of the levels feel super similar to each other, and can even bring in situations where certain patterns just don't line up properly causing some very annoying moments to happen. These annoying moments come particularly when the game tries to amp up the challenge, like in the game's later levels, the ghost levels, and the secret levels. Certain moments like phasing right through flickering and moving platforms if you don't land directly on top of them, tight horizonal holes you have to time your jetpack just right or else you just get instantly killed even if you're a few pixels too low, or those dumb unaligned pattern moments I mentioned earlier. The ghost stages and the secret grannie stages are particular highlights of all of the game's bullshit at it's highest point. Practically all the annoyance from the mechanics shine here, especially the instant kills in the grannie stages. (There was one part in a grannie stage in the mountain world that had a literal enemy spam section and I really want to know who playtested that and thought it was okay)

So, whatever. This game's just completely uninteresting to finish and a frustrating nightmare to complete. It's just generally not worth your time unless you really want another completion like I did.

Skákačka ze staré školy, kterou lze jednoznačně doporučit... Pokud vlastníte Nintendo 3DS. Ne že by tato konverze nebyla zdařilá či nezachycovala veškeré kvality, ale citelně postrádá 3D efekt, který se na hratelnosti originálu projevuje. 3D tam totiž není pro okrasu, ale slouží celkovému zážitku.

Pracuje se tu totiž se třemi plány (úplné popředí, "běžná" vzdálenost a v dáli), mezi kterými se konstantně přesouváte. I v takto ryzí 2D formě samozřejmě lze rozlišit jednotlivé plány nejen velikostí postaviček, ale jakmile se v pozdějších levelech nakupí na obrazovku přehršel plošinek a tuna nepřátel, kdy se nelze ani na vteřinu zastavit, tak se chtě nechtě vytrácí přehlednost. Což o originálu neplatilo.

Jinak vše dobré co platilo o něm, platí i zde. Čili postupné vylepšování zbraní, desítky a desítky relativně krátkých úrovní, které s trochou trpělivosti projde dříve či (mnohem pravděpodobněji) později každý. Jakmile byste však rádi vysbírali veškeré mince, objevili skryté a těžko dostupné vstupy do speciálních levelů, tak se obtížnost dostává do závratných výšin, kdy se po hráči vyžaduje div ne fotografická paměť k nadrcení veškerých vzorců pohybů všeho a všech v rámci úrovní. O následném převedení nadrcené teorie do praxe ani nemluvě. A pokud si vypnete "obezličkové" checkpointy v rámci úrovní, tak pak tuplem jde přesně o druh výzvy, po jaké hráči starých dobrých (s)nesových a gameboyovských titulů lační. Každopádně i tak (naštěstí) nejde o level überobtížnosti Super Meat Boye, ale o motivující obtížnost, kdy víte, že vinit z neúspěchu můžete jen a pouze vaše pomalé a neobratné prsty.

Got through 50% of the game and sadly, this is just one of those 'not for me' titles. This is a game made by developers all about capturing the feeling of retro games, and they sure do accomplish that in every way, good and bad.

My biggest gripes lie in what I feel is the wasted potential of the power ups and the super heavy platforming. There is a notable lack of room for error given to the player when moving from platform to platform, even a few steps off and you WILL fall down off into whatever lies below and just the sheer slowness of it all, akin to forcing the character to go through molasses or a permeant water level, just without any of the lower gravity you can experience beneath water.

This issue could be solved through the powerups, but they are only situationally useful. You can only have one per level, and if you are going after a secret of some kind they usually require a certain powerup within the level meaning some levels you are just locked into one if you want to get everything. It was a disappointing realization, to say the least.

I understand where the appeal is for this sort of challenging game, it's just not for me.