FranklinWI
Log Status
Completed
Playing
Backlog
Wishlist
Rating
Time Played
--
Days in Journal
1 day
Last played
July 10, 2022
Platforms Played
I played through story mode on Gnarly, mostly with April, and noodled around a bit with other characters. Also spent time playing co-op with two friends.
In co-op, it's a fine time, but everyone knows that's faint praise; most co-op games are at least somewhat fun with friends.
Solo, it's decent but never really great. In the game's favor we have a really wholehearted celebration of the 1987 cartoon, audiovisual TLC to match, and a pretty expansive movelist that makes jumping in and out of melees frantic and satisfying. Unfortunately, the game's got a couple of major problems.
One, the super attack is overpowered, and in the absence of any clear incentive not to, the player will want to charge up to full between fights, slowing down the pace. The devs built a pretty decent movelist and then incentivized the player to just spam supers instead.
Two, while most of the regular enemies are fun to fight, the boss design is pretty bad. Many bosses use a very basic pattern where you have to wait for an opening, then rush in to do one full combo at most, then back off and wait again. None of the bosses are great, but the better ones are just those with more openings or shorter periods between openings. You can't juggle bosses, or parry them, or do much other than wait for permission to attack, far as I can tell. The worst bosses are those like Rat King, Slash, and the last boss (game's new enough that I won't spoil it, although you can probably guess) that play red light/red light/red light/green light with attack opportunities. Go watch gameplay of Streets of Rage 4, God Hand, Ninja Warriors, etc for comparison. I just don't think the fundamentals of this game's boss design are good enough. I realize this is a relative weakness of a number of brawlers of the late 80s and early 90s, but the devs didn't have to reproduce every bad idea that was en vogue in 1992.
I've played an enjoyed a number of Tribute's games (Curses N Chaos in particular is generally underrated), and they always impress with their visuals, and usually the music's pretty good too, including here.
In co-op, it's a fine time, but everyone knows that's faint praise; most co-op games are at least somewhat fun with friends.
Solo, it's decent but never really great. In the game's favor we have a really wholehearted celebration of the 1987 cartoon, audiovisual TLC to match, and a pretty expansive movelist that makes jumping in and out of melees frantic and satisfying. Unfortunately, the game's got a couple of major problems.
One, the super attack is overpowered, and in the absence of any clear incentive not to, the player will want to charge up to full between fights, slowing down the pace. The devs built a pretty decent movelist and then incentivized the player to just spam supers instead.
Two, while most of the regular enemies are fun to fight, the boss design is pretty bad. Many bosses use a very basic pattern where you have to wait for an opening, then rush in to do one full combo at most, then back off and wait again. None of the bosses are great, but the better ones are just those with more openings or shorter periods between openings. You can't juggle bosses, or parry them, or do much other than wait for permission to attack, far as I can tell. The worst bosses are those like Rat King, Slash, and the last boss (game's new enough that I won't spoil it, although you can probably guess) that play red light/red light/red light/green light with attack opportunities. Go watch gameplay of Streets of Rage 4, God Hand, Ninja Warriors, etc for comparison. I just don't think the fundamentals of this game's boss design are good enough. I realize this is a relative weakness of a number of brawlers of the late 80s and early 90s, but the devs didn't have to reproduce every bad idea that was en vogue in 1992.
I've played an enjoyed a number of Tribute's games (Curses N Chaos in particular is generally underrated), and they always impress with their visuals, and usually the music's pretty good too, including here.