Friday, November 11, 2011

Melee Man?

So there's this game on Newgrounds.com called Melee Man, which is essentially a Mega Man clone.  The graphics were set to the resolution to the Gameboy Color, which gives the game a cute retro feel.

(play the game here http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/582797)

The game was pretty solid, but I have a few issues with it.

First off, the signs were WAY too annoying. I'm not dumb, I can figure out that spikes hurt when I step on them, I would have figured out that killing baddies would reveal keys (I'm not going to leave an enemy un-blasted). I didn't need the arrows to tell me where to go. The level design was nice enough that I didn't need any signs. Maybe one or two explaining the controls, but that's the absolute most.

Second, the levels were too easy. I had no trouble getting through all the non-boss levels.  They weren't full of mind bending puzzles, or tons of enemies swarming around me.  They were simple levels that required no thought or skill.  I had no emotional connection to the game except for the fact that I wanted to complete it to analyze it.

Which brings me to my final issue. The boss battles had a significantly higher difficulty than the rest of the game. The first boss was hard, but not too hard, the difficulty for the preceding levels could have simply been upped a bit. But that final boss... Jeez. It wasn't impossible, and I suck at this game and was able to beat him... after literally 5 hours of gameplay! The only reason I kept with the game was that I wanted to be able to give a fair review. Even with only 8 hit points, it was like a Castlevania boss. It would have felt more fair if the levels weren't so damn easy. And I hardly felt rewarded at the end. I would have liked some kind of "Conglaturation" sceen at least.

In the end, I give this game a 7/10

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