Jesus is in this game. Five stars!
I bought this game on sale, hoping that it would satisfy my pixel-art fetish until I found something more substantial. But what I thought would be a gimmicky "bargain bin" game turned out to be one of the best games I have played in recent memory. Read on to find out why…
The Good: The first thing that struck me is how slick this game is to play. The characters move perfectly across the screen. For a game like this, where you will find yourself dodging dozens of exploding enemies while trying to climb up cliffs or blow holes through walls, that tight control is essential. And they got it perfect. That same effort they put in to make the game play smooth was also present in the art and style of the game. Every single aspect of it was consistently and lovingly crafted with a specific goal in mind. They were trying to connect you to a certain sense of nostalgia about those old 1980s and 1990s action movies, and once again they completely succeeded. It was humorous but also self-conscious, not just blindly pelting you with action movie troupes but really picking out what made them fun and making the whole game about that fun. If you haven't seen the trailer for this game yet I suggest you go and take a look at it. When I first saw it I thought they were just trying to be funny (and they are). But the game actually feels exactly like that cartoon trailer. That's no small accomplishment.
The Bad: The only problem I encountered with this game is that some of the playable characters just felt weak and useless. Double Bro Seven and the Brocketeer in particular just could not pull their weight on the bro team, especially in the last third of the campaign. It took several shots from the Broketeer's pistol just to break one block or kill even the weakest bad guy. And when you have twenty bad guys on screen at once, some of them wanting very much to explode in your general vicinity, that pea-shooter of a gun was a real liability. Honestly though, I was switching between characters so often through the natural course of the gameplay that I hardly had time to feel the sting of frustration. Most of the other characters were a real joy to play, with weapons that blew the world apart in all these unique ways.
The Verdict: This game was just fun all the way around. It has all the consistent style and polish of a well-crafted game, and it also has the flexibility that makes all the best gaming "war stories" possible. There is no hand-holding, and yet the game is at just the right level of difficulty and ramps things up at the perfect pace. If the screenshots and videos look even mildly interesting to you I would definitely suggest you get your hands on this title. I don't think you will be disappointed.