Nightmare Reaper

At its best, Nightmare Reaper has a lot going for it: Meaty twitch combat, varied enemies, a solid soundtrack, satisfying interaction with the world (e.g. blood spatters your weapon if you stand close), and random levels for replayability. NR also features a diegetic interface, and even the skill trees are interwoven with world and story. The game indubitably has *great* bones - but also some shortcomings. - Random weapon spawns. Sometimes you find a great gun early, sometimes you find nothing dependable for hours, sometimes you find a BFG after everything is dead. - Event placement can be harsh, especially coupled with the weapon randomization. Stepping out of the starting room with 80% of the level's enemies spawning in while the door locks behind you happens frequently. Coupled with other random events (e.g. spawn crystals, or an army of hitscanning gnomes), this can enter unfair/unfun territory fast. - To get important score multipliers, you have to 100% your levels. Hunting down the last, lousy point gets old. - The game's readability is initially surprisingly good, given its limited pixel count. The visual clutter storm NR throws at you even in moderately big battles becomes overwhelming fast, especially since some enemies are so small they get obscured by just about anything. - Combat music starts up every time you kill an enemy. Given how often that happens while getting 100%, you'll hear the start of the combat tracks entirely too often. Low mind torture if you play for any length. (- The game has mini-games for your character's advancement. I bought NR as an fps game, not a jump'n'run/pokeclone. You can disable them, but there's a bit of lore and story lost.) Personal pet peeve: Locking the player into a small battle arena, and then spawning in enemies - a nice way of mixing up levels, but NR relies on it entirely too much. Exhausting. NR's foundation is great, but those issues keep it from taking full advantage of it. Still, a really solid title.

This is why I hate Rogue-likes. You get a good run; maybe you get lucky and score a good weapon; you get killed for some BS reason; then you are supposed to keep trying and dying until you power-up enough progress further. It's a glorified grindfest. I knew it was over for me when I went into a boss fight with full health and ammo; only to run out of ammo 7/8ths the way through it's health bar. I couldn't do anything. The game didn't spawn anymore ammo drops. That's just lousy game design. Inefficient ammo supply for a boss in an FPS? Not even Operation Body Count made that mistake. That personal gripe aside: The game just isn't intriguing enough to want to keep going. The 8 bit graphics can be a bit of an eyesore. The shooting isn't extremely satisfying. Most of the weapons I got hold of were mostly boring. Dare I say this? This is probably the WORST Andrew Hulshult soundtrack I've heard. Of all the retro shooters that have been coming out over the last few years (Dusk, Amid Evil, Ion Fury, ect.): this is probably the worst one (except for Strafe). Even in early access, I just don't see it getting much better because the core of everything is just so subpar. I recommend you skip this one.

A game with alot of promise that already delivers a great time pros -charming albeit creepy aesthetic -fluid and snappy gunplay -intriguing story concept -fantastic loot system -super mario style upgrade minigame is a fun twist of a character sheet cons -none

I started this game not expecting much, but I just finished it in 2 days! It only has the "first episode", so hopefully this will be completed as the story is NOT finished (for obvious reasons, I suppose). You play an insane female mass murderer, with abusive parents who trafficked her, etc. You are confined in a mental hospital. Each "day" you go to bed and your nightmares come after you, which you kill without mercy. At the end of each level, you "wake up" in your hospital room, and after a few levels things will occur in the "real" world. A key card is left within reach; a door didn't close fully; a guard left their keys inside a therapy room. As you go through the action-packed nightmare levels at night, you unlock new areas of the hospital during each day, with the apparent goal of escaping. The atmosphere in the hospital is creepy and well executed. Nightmares are like GZDoom, but with handmade level segments that are stitched together like Immortal Redneck. Weapons are Diablo-esque, with "base" types that roll modifiers depending on rarity level. Skills are mundane, extra health/ammo capacity/etc., only an extra jump, better kicking and a dodge ability are currently implemented as actually new capabilities you can acquire. Acquiring skills comes with a Mario-type minigame for added enjoyment, as being an insane psycho murderer apparently doesn't deprive one of handheld video games. Good behavior? Unlikely. But I am definitely intrigued and sincerely want to find out how this story ends! I think it would be creepy awesome if it ends like F.E.A.R. and the nightmares come into the real world! The only gripe I have is that the game simply ends and there is nothing to do but start from scratch: this takes off one star but will hopefully be fixed soon. I don't want to spend another 20 hours rebuilding my character just to finish the game and start again! Very well done game indeed!

The graphical style has grown on me, and I love the rogue-like element. I even like the little handheld RPG system, and the different types of weapons. I've even become invested in the story - I really want to see where it goes! This game is incredibly fun, and I just couldn't stop playing. Thanks to a variety of youtubers reviewing classic FPS games, I've purchased a fair few of them, but this is easily the one I preferred the most. I do have some minor problems, hence the 4 star rating. First of all, the platforming in this game is incredibly frustrating at times, and is not a welcome break from the combat. I had some major difficulties on some levels due to the amount of precise platforming I needed to do to advance, which doesn't feel right for a retro shooter. Some of the "events" do not make it very clear what you have to do in order to get past them, which resulted in frustrating deaths for me until I eventually looked them up online in a guide. I had a similar experience with some of the special rooms where you get a special weapon if you get through them - but some are full of hazards and it isn't clear what to do. And of course, if you die, you have to start in a different map, and it might be a different room. I also found a couple of the bosses impossible until I ended up getting a necromancer skull as a weapon and then just bombarding them with skeletons (basically, cheesing them). Some of the enemies are total bullet sponges which are not fun at all, and it's only much much later when your weapons can properly deal with them. I realise I've written a fair amount of criticsm here, and many may wonder why I'm not giving it a lower score. That's because it's fun. I hope some of these points are addressed (mainly the platforming) because this is pretty close to a 5 star game.