Not a Hero

Awesome platform-shooter game. [Alt+Tab to make the game fullscreen if you're running in windowed mode]

Not a Hero is yet another paper-thin game that relies solely on a not-very-original mechanic. It's yet another run and gun game, only this time with 2D pixel art. It doesn't really have a plot to speak of, but rather pointless challenges you need to complete to unlock new characters. Sadly, it's so unfun, it's a game purely for completionists. You can complete the levels without doing any of the side challenges, but there's no fun in it, since it's far too easy. And doing the side challenges isn't very fun either - there's no joy in collecting carrots or kittens, or reaching a certain checkpoint in time. But without those side challenges the game is empty. Sadly, trying to complete all challenges is extremely frustrating - not because of the skill required, but because of how easy it is botch a run. Getting everything perfect requires playing the same level over and over again, at first to get familiar with it, and later to find the path the game's creators want you to take to complete it as easily & quickly as possible. Because a great run can be ruined by something as simple as getting too close to an enemy. Enemies can punch you, sometimes sending you flying through a window into a lower floor, with no way to return to the floor you were in. There is some fun in unlocking new characters, but you quickly realize that they're either decent or atrocious, making you stick to the same handful of characters. There's just very little thought put behind this game - it's a hodgepodge of ideas and mechanics done better elsewhere. There is humor to this game, but it's so nonsensical, it rarely comes across as funny.

Not A Hero was the worst run-and-gun I've played in a long time. Got fed up in a record time of 5 minutes, two mini-missions. There was nothing to do there. You can walk forward, shoot a gun, reload, and slide tackle. That's about it. You can't crouch, you can't jump, and you can't do the hiding in the background trick that enemies do all the time. When you get shot at, you just take it in the face. You can't even choose when exactly to open a door. As soon as you go near, they fly wide open and enemies start shooting at you and you start shooting back. The game itself would be 2/5 despite all the monotony decribed above if it didn't fudge up so many other things as well. Unfortunately it doesn't support native full screen. The only option is a full screen window, which leaves the window's top bar and your operating system's bottom bar visible, as well as window borders. Every time you go to main menu, the window is resized back to medium. There's no video options. To edit any options during a mission, such as music volume, you have to abort the mission to go back to main screen and then start from the beginning after changing the settings. Every mission starts with a nonsensical mission briefing from the player's boss. He words appear too slowly, but as soon as he completes a sentence, it disappears right away, before the next one starts slowly. The briefings are also far too long, especially as the story wasn't interesting, the attempts at humor didn't work for me, and there's no informational value either. This reminded me slightly of Action Squad: Door Kickers, which is an excellent tactical run-and-gun. It does pretty much everything right that this one left half-cooked. I heartily recommend playing it instead. Or if you prefer more action, mayhem and a fun couch co-op of up to four people, try Broforce.

Great game but, unless I've missed something obvious, it only seems to run in windowed mode which was very disappointing. Fullscreen should be a requirement in any modern game.

Bought this on a much older PC. It played fine then. On the new one, it glitches, crashes, and most annoyingly, doesn't support fullscreen. Why the devs couldn't have resolution choices in the options, one of the absolute most basic features in gaming is beyond me. I had fun playing it on the old rig. But I can't recommend anybody play it today if you don't want to squint at a 1280x800 window. Disappointing.