Nefarious

This game is very good and has great writing.
Although some of the levels were a bit bullshit to beat i don't know I'm just bad at this game or something else.

Overall, I enjoyed this game, but the controls and level design were definitely janky at times. It had some good humor and subverted or deconstructed tropes in some really good ways. The moment to moment gameplay was just kind of meh though, and the jankiness could have definitely been tuned up.

Lots of charm, sometimes a bit annoying, but some good writing and characters.
I like games with a hub like this where you can just talk to people between every level about dumb goofy stuff and get some extra bits and the like, and I really like how Crow still acts like a genuine villain throughout the whole game (even when he's befriending the princesses he's kidnapped)

One problem though is the upgrades are kinda useless. Theres 4 punches and 4 grenades you can get but the grenade upgrades a useless cause you need the default grenade to grenade jump, and some collectables can only be attained using these. You can get sticky grenades for bomb jumping too, but the other two upgrades removes your ability to grenade jump so you'll always leave them unequipped even after buying em (unless you're replaying a level). The explosive and "Far reaching" punch upgrades also dont feel like they do anything unless you specifically got the chargable punch, so ultimately the upgrades feel like they're just kind of tacked on.

Other than that, the levels are fine (some minor annoying areas but others have cool ideas) and none of the levels were annoying enough to stop me from playing to the end. If you like games like Shantae and Double Cross, this should be right up your alley

Good idea for a game, fun charcters and jokes, but it needs:
-better level design.
-better controls.
-better art style.
and up for Nefarious 2 if they improve it.

I really tried to like this game. I tried my absolute hardest to enjoy it. The concept was amazing, the characters were good. But the storyline? The length of the game? The gameplay? There's no nice way to put it, I'm sorry. But it absolutely sucked.

The difficulty felt completely artificial. Whether it's swarming the screen with endless enemies, positioning enemies so that they constantly knock the player into instant death pits, the OVERABUNDANT AMOUNT OF INSTANT DEATH PITS, and the fact that the hitboxes for the enemies are extremely off. The machine gun can fire for multiple seconds straight through some enemies without harming them, as an example.

As for the boss fights, (the part of the game I was most excited for) they absolutely sucked. First off, the ranged weapons can down some of them in literally 3 seconds. And each boss fight, while it has a nice reference, has a major problem with it:

The first boss fight, where you pilot a vehicle similar to Eggman's wrecking ball, was the one I was the most excited for. And yet, it misses the point. The game was advertised as allowing the player to pilot these things against heroes. Except they gave all the heroes basic boss battle characteristics, making it feel less like playing as the villain and more just playing an unconventional boss battle. As for the fight itself, the hero can't shoot unless he builds up a pillar beneath him. And while you can hit him for a little tiny bit of damage, hitting the tower underneath him makes him fall down and stuns him for a long time. This mechanic seems odd. Hitting the tiny target on top deals chip damage, but hitting the massive tower underneath him once opens him up for attacks? Shouldn't it be the reverse?

The next boss is Dr. Mechano. Although, he's more of a midboss. He pilots a flying vehicle and you can only hit him by bouncing up the wall and punching him... At least, that was the idea. As usual, they forgot about the grenade launcher and machine gun. Since they didn't put invincibility frames after the enemy gets hit, you can just spray your gun and kill him in about 5 seconds.

Next, let's talk about the giant mech fight against the viking hero. Once again, it sucks. The entire fight breaks down to "punch randomly and occasionally hold left or right to dodge". And it gives you SO MUCH TIME to dodge the attacks, making it a joke to win, except for one tiny thing. At least when I played it, it seemed to forget to tell the player you can hold left and right to dodge the attacks. As such, I was stuck trying to use the punch to dodge, until I accidently figured it out. Maybe it did show the left and right arrows and I missed it, but regardless, some labels as to what the buttons did would have helped. Terrible tutorial aside, the fight is just boring. Like I said above, you punch, punch, dodge an extremely telegraphed attack, punch

Continuing, we have the RPG boss fight. This one got me so excited when I saw it. Playing as the rpg villain? AW YEAH, LET'S DO THIS!... Until I realized you have only 2 attacks and each hero only has 1 attack. Basically just grenade launcher twice, then orbital cannon whoever doesn't get healed. I don't even want to talk anymore about that fight, it just makes me upset about it's wasted potential

Next, we have the fight against basically the Mechazord. Although, you're not in a giant robot yourself, instead being in your normal state. You know what that means! The grenade launcher or machine gun downs it in about 5 seconds!

Following that, we have a mecha godzilla suit against Mack! No way they could make THIS suck, right? WRONG! Mack only moves up and down at the same rate for the entire fight, and fires very slow shots. You can't actually shoot on demand, instead you fire after blocking about 3-4 shots. The problem with this is, if an enemy is moving up and down with no deviation in speed or turning point, you can just follow his position with the arm and block every single shot. Boring AF

The next few fights are just repeats of previous boss fights, no need to say anything here other than that they still suck

Now, we're getting to the end. Spoiler alert ahead!








Still here? Alright then.
You pilot the Doom Howitzer against Hyper Mack, and... Well, you already know what I think of it. It SUCKS. Although I like the idea of having your character have 3 phases, it's pointless. You can't die or kill Mack in form 1 or 2, so the fight only starts at form 3. When it does start, you have full movement, tons of health, and a laser that downs mack very quickly. I would like to mention, while this happens you're getting attacked by hordes of mini-bots that seemed pointless at the time. The fight itself is kind of bland. Mack dies easily, it's nigh impossible to be hit if you keep moving, and touching Mack with the ship damages him.

Now for the true ending boss fight. THIS is the one thing about the game I didn't completely hate. You fight AGAINST the boss you were controlling in the normal ending. And the tiny robots from before? They're used as projectiles against the boss in the true ending fight. I did really like that little touch.

As for the true ending itself, THAT was the one thing about the game I liked. Normally in games where you control the villain, he conforms and becomes the hero. While Crow DID perform a heroic action, he stays as a villain. I really liked that break from the status quo.

Although, one problem. Can a good ending save a bad story? My stance is unfortunately no. Although, I'm not here just to mindlessly complain. This was a kickstarter game, and it's obvious they tried their absolute hardest to make this good. So, I'll leave here some suggestions I have that I personally think could make the game better. If the devs want to include any of them, that's fine. If they don't care and like the game the way it is, that's fine too. After all, it's their game, if they enjoy it more this way then I'm in no position to judge them.

First, the boss fights need more variety. In traditional boss fights, the player (controlling the hero) and the boss itself have a wide array of attacks and weapons to use. Having both the boss and the hero have what boils down to only one attack is a major problem with the game. Also, maybe patch the issue with the gun hitbox and the ability to down bosses in 5 seconds with the gun

Second, focus a bit more on enemy placement. While having flying enemies with homing attacks placed right by death pits will kill the player, that's just artificial difficulty. It's just not fair to place enemies so they pop up around the screen border and knock you into instant death pits. Btw, maybe tone down on the death pits. They're literally everywhere

Third, the final boss fight (non true ending) has no closure with Mack. He gets shot, and it cuts to The Doom Howitzer opening fire. I feel like there needs to be a scene with Mack actually talking inbetween him getting shot and that cutscene. The change felt so abrupt, and could really use that little bit of padding

Finally, I'd like to see an extended DLC story at some point or at least a DLC with more things to do. The game has so little content, and honestly isn't worth $15. It's barely worth $5

In conclusion, I don't think the devs were lazy. They tried their hardest to make this game what they wanted, but it's filled to the brim with problems! If they fixed the endless problems, I'd be more than willing to change my review. But at the moment, (as much as I really wanted to love this game) It's absolutely awful.

Honestly wish I didn't give this game a chance to prove me wrong, since I can't even get a refund now. If you start playing the game, and don't like it, the rest of the game is even worse so don't try to give it a chance. Just get your refund and buy a better game.

Not a coincidence that at the moment, the top 4 reviews are 2 negative and 2 positives who got the game for free anyway. SMH 2/10

Unfortunate, really.

I like the premise. I like the characters. I love the music videos they made for the game (which made me buy it in the first place) and after I finished the game, I ended up reading the webcomic. Honestly, everything about the game is pretty good – except the actual GAME part of it.

There’s no going around it – the game’s horrible controls make it very annoying to play through. It’s generally easy enough that you can do most of the levels with only a few deaths, so it’s okay.
EXCEPT for the final boss fight in the good ending. Jesus Christ. Precision punching things with almost nonexisting hitboxes into moving targets is not easy, and the controls WERE NOT helping. I ended up forcing myself through it out of sheer spite, and I gladly banished the game from my drive afterwards.

Which is why I can’t really recommend it in the end. Probably better to watch a Let’s Play, than to play it yourself.

I was torn with this review. On one hand, I like the concept and there is a lot of heart and charm in this game. On the other hand, the gameplay itself is a clunky mess. The controls feel awkward, and the "reverse boss battles" are utterly unsatisfying (except for the final boss). The music is nice, but the sound effects feel like someone is clanking pots together instead of lending to the experience. Its not a terrible game. Its just VERY unpolished, and it shows.

In the end, I'd give it a 6/10. It killed time and gave a few chuckles....but there are a lot of other games with charm AND good gameplay.

Buotiful. this game i feel was just perfect it had light hearted moments of sentiemnt, rage and genuine laughter from perfectly terrible puns.the gameplay was great i loved the ammount of upgrades you could make to yourself and to your aresenaal of explosives but what over all sold me on this game were the boss fights so much work went into these it actually feels like theres a real person trying to defeat you even though its all programed
10/10 i pray to gaben for a possible sequeal

Alright, after chatting with others about games and stuff, I mentioned that I would like to have more games where you are THE villain and not just like other games where you can do whatever you want, I mean where you ARE the one who all are suppose to fear and hate, the one who is the stage boss or final boss of everything and one of them mentioned this one.

When I first time see this, I pretty much liked what I saw in trailer and decided to give a try and my first impression was that this kinda has voice acting in the game, but it is mostly just text.

So as you can see the design of the main character and some others are pretty much inspired from megaman and others and the art style is quite nice to look at, especially on Crow's character design (oh by the way, Crow is the main character)

As for the gameplay, it is good ol' platformer and you have to get to end of the stage for boss battle, but with one twist with battles, YOU are the boss of the stage and I was pretty much waiting for it to finally show other bosses how it's done for real.

Nefarious also has upgrades, but to be honest, you're mostly going to use just grenade launcher perhaps for entire game, only if you're trying to collect all stuff from stage.

Alright, let's just check all the Positives, neutrals and cons.

POSITIVES.

+ Interesting gameplay.
As I said and as you saw on trailer, you play as villain and as stage boss, than as another ordinary platformer where you just go there, beat the boss and save the world.

+ Artstyle
The artstyle is quite comical and perhaps even fitting for this kind of game, where you are as typical villain.

+ Story
I will say once again, I'm not good with story section, but this one has good one on comedy side, kinda reminds me Disgaea.

+ Music
As being villain, you need kickass theme... Or Jazzy one too.
I pretty much like Crows theme and some other theme as well, especially the final battle theme.

+ Being as villain
I don't think I need to explain why, but these kind of games are rare and I know you can be evil in other games like skyrim or other, but I mean being the absolute threat to the world, to be leader of evil force, to be the villain in game.

NEUTRALS.

= Crow having a nose.
I dunno why I focusing on nose, maybe because, other doesn't have one or on main cover and mostly he doesn't have it and I kinda liked about his design, but it's a random thing that suddenly popped up and doesn't even matter on this.

= You need your first range weapon to get all collectibles.
I've used grenade launcher to get all crowns and vinyls, even if some part you don't even need it, but you still mostly use it.

= 12 hour gameplay.
If you do everything in the game, get all items and other levels, it is just 12 hour of gameplay or less if you're good at it, but it isn't that bad, it just depends your opinion how long gameplay it should be or so.

CONS.

- Less upgrades
You can almost get all upgrade on playing couples stage and getting all the credits that you can find.

- Jumping points almost ridicilous precision points
I don't know if you're struggling with these, those purples points that has bombs in it to make a jump, I had a great difficulties to manage those jumps, even with the controller, I still manage to fail to jump from them, because it feels like it is very precise on when you push the jump button.
Most of the times however, I manage to jump on them, but some reason certain parts just went for fail jump several times.
Still it might be just me or xbox one controller is derping around those parts.


Conclusion.
Nefarious is those rare villain games, which I want to see more, rather than those others where you can be "villain" if you want to, but is this game worth of your attention?
Well, it depends, but if you want my opinion, I say it is worth your attention, since after all, I am the mad scientist and an villain who just happens not having his own fortress... And minions... Or rival...

ANYWAY, that's all for now.

Doktor Greenman, logging out.

Nefarious gives me mixed feelings. While an enjoyable single player experience, it felt hollow at times to me.

*BEFORE I go any further, note this review will have spoilers. I want to dissect this game and why its problems stand out to me in full. So because of this, I wont have censor bars. If only because that would get annoying to see almost half or all of the review blanketed. Thank you.*

First off, the music. Its not bad, but at times during a level, the music really didn't fit the mood of the situation. It feels awkward to me and the music can potentially get annoying hearing it on repeat. Some change in music would be nice sometimes.

Gameplay is weird, and it is a MUST, I REPEAT MUST to have a controller, or you'll have trouble with this game. Its movement feels a bit sticky and slippery at the same time, as your character slides with what little momenteum he's got. This makes it troubling when in later levels you have to deal with instant death pits and surfaces. It is ESPECIALLY frustrating on the secret level, when you have to hop on small moving platforms to get to the next checkpoint. I just got frustrated at this game really. The punching is awkward as it sometimes, if not, always misses the enemies or doesn't push them back enough to not get hit. Making the ranged weapon a must use. And lobbing grinades is annoying enough as it is as you have no way of telling what the tragectory is unless you spam it, which is equally risky as your bombs can knock you around.
Topping this with platforming and enemies that can fill the screen and/or attack through surfaces like walls, then you have frustrating gameplay. And this doesn't help when the true final boss is a little more fast paced than previous fights. And this current state of the gameplay isn't equipped for that if you top THAT with bad hit detection, which is very, very frequent. Weapons that should miss you by inches hit you anyways, and being on the hearts system, thats not a good recipe. I really dont like this gameplay on later levels as it really does break my interest in the game when I have to be focused on the dumbest things. Especially on bramble path, which, by the way, has the most infuriating platforming in a game with slippery/sticky controls while enemies flood you at every orface. This is not fun, this is annoying. A bunch of badly made mechanics are clumped together to create an annoying game that is realized later down the line.

The one thing that kept me going, although, was the story and humor. The humor is gigglingly funny if only because the story lines up well with it. Being about a villian trying to break the status quo of "Hero beats baddy, wins the day". I like it then, but then the story goes into "friendship solves all problems", which was kind of a let down, but the humor was enough to make me ignore some of the stories downfalls. If you like funny and witty dialogue, come down here.

The artstyle, let me be honest, is not that great. Its trying to go for a cartoony look but it just doesn't fit. I feel it should've had more flare to it or at least some interesting theme around it, but its just plain cartoony. In all honesty, I dont like it. It doesn't have to be pixelly or anything, but I would prefer it would be more interesting to look at if anything. Mixing that with the music and it honestly feels bland after the seventh loop of the same song. Not that great in my personal opinion.

The "Reverse-Boss Fights" are...really meh when you think about it. Really its just pressing some buttons, while doing one thing that dodges their attack. It could've been more dynamic or challenging, but it just didn't feel like so. The final boss on the normal route though, that was honestly good to play, if only because the challenge felt like it was there. The true final boss fight, again, was near impossible unless you had a stroke of luck. It practically requires a controller to play and even then good luck with the hit detection/hit boxes.


Overall, not that great. It may have good humor and an interesting story, but its just held down from being what it is, a video game. Unless its on a damn good sale or you just want to see what its like for yourself, go ahead. Just be warned as the repetitive unchanging music mixed with a featureless artstyle, frustrating gameplay and somewhat disappointing outcome of the story can make for a boring experience that might as well have been time spent on something else.

I love this game for what it set out, but the outcome just didn't meet basic standards.

The story is a lot better then what I expected from this game. I just figured it was going to be goofy, but just like was the case for me with Disgaea, it does have it's more serious moments and even might hit you in the feels a time or two.

The gameplay really isn't anything special but it serves it's purpose and I enjoyed it well enough as someone who usually doesn't like playing platformers.

Also has one of the most memorable soundtracks for me in recent memory.

Very nice side scrolling platformer, Great soundtrack, and a fun story! If you're a bit iffy on the trailers and screenshots, all i can say is give it a go, you may end up liking it! if you don't like it, there is a refund option if you play it for no more than 90 minutes overall.

The controls could stand to be a bit tighter and there are a few bugs here and there, but other than that I find this game to be very enjoyable. The art is beautiful, the soundtrack is fun, and the story and cast are fantastic. Worth the money in my opinion.

My only regret is that we didn't tell Becky what a thorax is.

Argh. This is one of those games. The would-be greats, the ones that could have, should have been good, but for whatever reason or other just didn’t end up being. These tend to upset me more than just outright bad games, since it seems so easy to look at things that could have been changed to make it great. Nefarious has a lot of those.

You play as Crow, latest in a line of bird-themed sky pirates whose MO is kidnapping princesses. His typical target is Princess Mayapple, but is always foiled by her kingdom’s hero, Mack. At the end of the game’s tutorial level, though, Mack decides to throw in the towel by breaking up with Mayapple, since in his own words she sees Crow more than he does. It’s a good introduction to the game and decently humorous.

Even though he’s not used to actually winning, Crow decides to go whole hog with the opportunity, and steal four more princesses to power a doomsday device and take over the world. Each resides in a different themed kingdom with its own gimmick, and you have to bust through their security, kidnap them, and make it back out. You do this through platforming, and this is where the game unfortunately starts to become lack-luster.

Crow’s arsenal consists of a metal gauntlet he can either punch people with, or fire grenades out of. You can do these in any direction you want, although bizarrely your punch is right click on a mouse and the grenades are bound to the left, which seems really backwards. Now, even though you’re the villain (a very silly, essentially harmless villain, but one nonetheless) in the story, it never felt to me like that factored into the gameplay much. These two attacks are pretty much all Crow has, and he ends up feeling weaker than many heroes from similar games: Mega Man and Shovel Knight have a whole arsenal of weapons by the end of their games, Kirby has whatever power you want to have, Mario is a deft acrobatic, Shantae can shapeshift into a ton of different forms, and that’s only a few examples. Crow doesn’t really have anything unique of his own, and that would be bad enough if he were just the hero, but the idea of most villains is that they’re set up as superior to the hero, a real obstacle.

Which Crow still sort of is, but only because the game is so easy. You can breeze through the stages pretty easily, and most enemies are ineffectual. You start with three heart containers, and damage typically comes in halves. Health drops very often, and you can buy three more hearts inexpensively, letting Crow take up to twelve hits before expiring. All death does anyway is make you drop a bit of your money, Shovel Knight style.

Midway into each stage, you kidnap that world’s princess, and gain an ability from each of them (except for Mayapple since her kingdom’s the tutorial). This is where something interesting could have come into play, but I found it a letdown. The first, a bug princess, gives you a hover-jump, which isn’t bad but has been done before. The second, a dwarf, turns the rest of the level into an auto-scroller after she decides to make Crow into her steed. I actually really liked the demon kingdom’s gimmick, where you send out a wave of fire upon throwing a grenade which hardens into a platform, but you hardly use it. Once you bring a princess back to the ship you don’t use their ability again, so none of their mechanics feel as fleshed out as they could be.

Before that, though, you have to deal with the heroes protecting them. In theory this is where Crow’s villainy comes more into play, as instead of fighting them on foot you hop into one of his robots, flipping the perspective around. That’s a great idea, but the devil lies in the execution. The first of these places you in what’s basically the wrecking ball hovercraft Doctor Robotnik used in the very first Sonic boss fight. Instead of it working like that game, though, you’re fighting with the physics engine to swing the ball at a fairly small target, sort of spoiling the homage. In the second, you’re in a giant robot (I assume also a Robotnik reference, in this case to his final fight in Sonic 3 & Knuckles) trying to pound a dwarf with its fists, but your movement is limited to jerking the body back and forth, and punching at the same two spots. It’s clumsy, and nowhere near as enjoyable as I imagine they hoped. The two guys you fight also have clear patterns and vulnerability periods, so they don’t really feel like you’re fighting something controlled by the player - compare it to Shovel Knight’s boss fight in Plague Knight’s campaign, where he has tactics for every situation and uses his full arsenal of weaponry.

A lot of other reviews of this game praise the characters, and here I sort of have to disagree. The princesses you kidnap are pretty one note, and while Crow himself is a decent character, he’s the same kind of ‘laughable bad guy’ I’ve seen in plenty of other media. It’s not anything new, and that’s actually true on Steam as well, since Plague Knight (I'm sorry for bringing that game up so much in this review) pretty much does everything Crow does but with much better gameplay. I was particularly disappointed with the heroes you fight, since they're practically non-entities aside from Mack and only show up for their fights. It feels like they could have been a more constant premise, although that would probably take more levels for each kingdom.

Overall Nefarious could have been a classic, but unfortunately the gimmick seems to have overshadowed having really good, or even just solid gameplay, and you can’t get away with not having that in a platform game.

I was really looking forward to this game since its Kickstarter, but I regretfully made it my first Steam Refund today after playing three levels.

I'll let others discuss their gripes with the controls, complete lack of input rebinding, mandatory full screen, and other issues of that sort. (If any options regarding those things were present, my apologies, I did not see them anywhere I checked.)

My main problem was the presentation, mostly the audio. Most of it is bland or generic, blending into the background. This stood out to me especially in the dwarf level with the miniboss. The regular music was used for the entire fight, making the whole thing feel less exciting than it otherwise would have.

In addition to this, there are very few sound effects, and the game seemingly doesn't acknowledge if you lose against the heroes in the boss fight - not even the far too speedy and soundless window that normally appears when you die. I'm not saying that your money should drop if you lose these fights, I'm saying there should be slightly more here than an unceremonious dump to the checkpoint 5 seconds before the fight.

More, minor issues include using B (on a 360 controller) to talk to people, but trying to open the upgrade screen by pressing B immediately closes it. Also, even if using a controller, keyboard prompts appear during cutscenes by default each time until you press a button. The game should at least remember what input device I'm using.

Overall, I see potential here, but the game lacks several layers of polish. As I don't like things undercooked, I cannot personally recommend the game.

I'll be honest - I wish this was an RPG.

As a sort of pseudo-platformer, it is decent but the controls are not perfect. If the devs ever tighten them up so you don't slide so much during jumps and make grenade jumping a bit more predictable - this will be a solid game gameplay wise.


That said - love the characters. The story is nice, the dialouge is filled with humor and villain jokes. To be honest - I wish this was an RPG because that way they'd add MORE interactions. Or so I hope - I badly need more of these characters.

Sequel?
With more dialog?
Please?
I'd buy....

Do I love this game? Hell, what is there NOT to love? It's everything I've ever asked for in a game!
The villain as the playable protagonist, waifu worthy material everywhere, and a whole lot of retro references.
If I had a lot of arms, I would give this a thousand thumbs up.
Guess I should say one more thing before I post the review...


VILLAIN NUMBER ONE!

I was waiting for this game ever since it was promoted on Brawl in the Family. I thought it looked like an interesting idea and early screenshots made it look like a neat take on the platformer genre.

Now it's finally out, and it was a day-one purchase for me simply because I was waiting for it for the better part of a couple years. Was it worth the wait?

Okay, let's start with the positives: The game looks real great and the animations are smooth. I can notice the odd slip-up with graphics here and there, but for the most part everything looks good. The different looks of the stages are a nice touch as well, with some of them being bright and colourful and some being dark and ominous. There are only about five different "islands" spread out between all the levels in the game, so you will notice a bit of repetition in graphics between the levels that take place on the same island, however.

Gameplay is good, and playing with a keyboard and mouse I had few issues with the controls. The controls do take a little bit to get used to, especially with the mouse, where the right click is the melee attack and the left click is the ranged. Normally I would picture it being the other way around, but here I was able to get used to the controls pretty quickly. For the most part, the gameplay is largely running, jumping, punching and throwing bombs, but different gameplay mechanics come into play on some of the levels, usually just for one level. Things are for the most part kept pretty basic.

As far as the humour in the game goes, I found a lot of the dialogue to be pretty funny, and a lot of the jabs are usually at Crow's expense. There are references to all sorts of different game genres scattered throughout the game, and I'm sure most gamers will pick up on them.

Now for the negatives: The biggest, glaring one is the downright cheapness during a few of the levels. For the most part, the levels are pretty straightforward and nothing you shouldn't be able to handle, but a couple of the levels have enemy placement and instant-death surfaces that shoot the difficulty factor past hard and into unfair territory. The last level alone was the cause of most of my respawns in the game solely for how annoying the enemies and pits were.

While they're few and far between there ARE some noticeable graphic errors here and there. This is something that hopefully can be fixed later on, but for the moment it IS a little nitpick I have with the game.

Overall, I do like the game and I think it's worth picking up. Your mileage may vary on whether you think it's worth the full price, but I say if you see it for a good price during a sale, then pick it up and give it a try.

+ Concept, character building and dialogue are spot on. A real treat to enjoy
+ Variety of unique gameplay styles and encounters helps keep things fresh
+ Art from Gashi-Gashi is delightful

- Enemy placement and level designof the basic platformer gameplay are rather unfair, often unfun
- The Sound Effects (or lack thereof) in the boss battles makes them feel a little hollow

I was pretty excited to play this game when it came to my attention a couple weeks ago. I was excited to play from the other side. I always thought that the villain was always the more interesting character. For a good portion of the game though, it plays out like a lot of other typical platformers. The way the game sets itself apart being the delightful banter between characters and the power-trip of being the bad guy. There is a variety of gameplay styles included in the game, but the majority of it your standard platformer ... a platformer that can be rather unforgiving. This really seems in contrast with the power-trip that I wanted to get out of this game.

So yeah, the gameplay was disappointing in parts, but I fell in love with the characters. I have little desire to actually play the game anymore, but I felt I got what I paid for. I want more of the characters, but I don't feel like it has to be from here. If there was a TV show, movie, or comic book with Crow as our lead guy I'd be all over it. That being said, if this was introduced to me some other way, it wouldn't stick. It had to be a video game for this to work.

Ok, so I'm a very huge fan of the concept of being a villain. This game? does exactly that. Sure, I beat this game in 6 hours cause this game reminds me of Wario Land, but it was a great experience to fight those goody two shoes heroes and foiling their generic themed rescue missions. This game most of it all; RPG elements (for like 10 minutes), underwater segments, references to other video games (I'm looking at you villain museum lake), and many other things. Now, There are some things about this game that is frustrating.... well in my opinion that is.
1) This game did feel rather short, but then again its probably cause I'm one of those "advanced gamers"
2) This game's collectables are rather frustrating to find or understand where to access
3) This game feels like There is some cut content which makes it feel short

Other than those peeves listed above, this game is great.
Good Soundtrack? You bet.
Good character design and level design? But Of course!
Good Story? Hell yeah!

So what score could I possibly give this game?
8.3 outta 10 seems fair
mostly cause of its length but it's positives make up for its length.

Before you read any further, please note that this game only gets a half-hearted recommendation from me. It's certainly not a terrible game or anything - it is good. But it's not really great, either. Just kind of... average good.

Like, ok, so the art looks fantastic. The game is downright gorgeous, as you can see from the screenshots. And the writing for the story is pretty top-notch as well, and the game has some very creative moments involving the story. But as for the gameplay? Well, it's not *bad* or anything, it serves its purpose. But its not super entertaining. Once you upgrade your health one or two times, the levels become very trivial (except for the final level which spikes up in difficulty so far it feels like slamming into a brick wall). And the reverse boss fights - which were easily the thing I was looking forwards to the most, mind you - were a bit of a letdown. They all controlled a bit clunkily, and the one where you punch the ground gets special mention for being incredibly frustrating to control. Not to mention the heroes you're supposed to be fighting are very, VERY predictable, and as a result not difficult at all to fight.

But, in my opinion, the game's biggest sins come from its sound design. Now, the music on its own is all fine - I love Taranto's work, usually. This time around, however, the tracks sound... lacking. I'm not quite sure how to put it other than that. They feel like they needed maybe a couple more passes to make them something truly spectacular. On top of that, most of the time the tracks are far too sweeping and slow paced to fit the fast paced, action-y feel of the game. Also they commit the unforgivable sin of improper looping - instead of seamless loops (which have clearly been composed into the tracks), they fade out after about 2 loops and then start over at the beginning. As a sound designer myself, I cannot forgive that. It's just lazy.

Overall, this game feels... unfinished. The sound design all sounds kind of work in progress, there's a lot of areas where the game feels a bit unpolished (no death animations, no flashy animations for defeating heroes (hell, not even any dialogue for that), things that clearly should have sound effects not having them, etc.).

I still reccomend the game. For what it's worth, it's a good, servicable product. Just don't expect anything great.