![]() We should get rid of that!” I prefer Cyber Shadow ’s system to having to start entire levels from the top, don’t get me wrong, but games like Celeste have proven that instant respawns at the start of each room are the way to go. Cyber Shadow wants to recapture the feeling players had when they’d get game overs, but it also alleviates that pain by being far more generous with checkpoints than its ‘80s influences and ditching lives entirely.Ĭall me crazy, but I think it took developers two decades too long to gather in a room and say, “You know what sucks? Beating a really hard challenge only to die on the next one and having to do the first over again. Retro games inherently reuse design philosophies that may be dated, and the best ones take those enjoyment stifling anachronisms and touch them up for modern audiences. I get what Mechanical Head Studios is going for. You’ll waste a ton of time redoing rooms you have already cleared. I’d have guessed I died once a minute, and that may be due to the way the game’s dated checkpoint system disrupts progress. That’s once every 113 seconds, and it feels like the math is being generous here. Clearing it took me seven hours almost on the dot, and I died 222 times. You’ll die a lot the first time you play through Cyber Shadow. The final two stages ask you to apply everything that you’ve learned along the journey, and they are worthy challenges. By the time you hit chapter eight, the stream has transformed into rapids, crescendoing with a high-speed highway sequence that blew me away. The further up creek, the more relaxed the water. The first three stages feel a little too similar, mostly due to Shadow’s upgrades serving combat utility rather than enhancing his navigation skills, but the rest flow like a river headed towards a waterfall. You’re buying it for the thrill of performing a high wire act while hordes of robots try to knock you to your doom, and that’s what Mechanical Head Studios delivers.Ī lot is packed into the game’s 10 chapters, and there’s a beautiful rhythm to how the pacing increases as each transitions into the next. You’re not buying Cyber Shadow for a gritty, complex tale about love and duty. Cyber Shadow ’s story is a bit of a mess, but the occasional cutscenes rarely intrude on the action. His flesh is torn from his body, and his consciousness is transferred into a robotic vessel. He looks out from a city rooftop clenching a golden medallion and watches as a bomb explodes. As he awakens, Shadow remembers being human. Platform(s): Steam, Switch, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, PS4, PS5Ĭyber Shadow opens with L-Gion, a high-tech version of Mega Man ’s Eddie, waking the cyber ninja Shadow from stasis. Is that a problem? If they’re as good as Cyber Shadow, absolutely not. It’s a well-polished title with concise and responsive controls, sharp graphics, and a soundtrack that may be the best we hear all year.Īre NES homages overdone? Yes. A whole lot of kids who grew up on Ninja Gaiden and Mega Man went on to become game developers hellbent on recapturing the magic of their childhoods, and while that’s not necessarily a bad thing, it does make it tough for their games to stand out.Ĭyber Shadow stands out, and not just because Yacht Club Games’ logo sits right next to the game’s eye catching ninja cover art. When it comes to oversaturated markets, nothing compares to cute pet videos and indie retro action platformers.
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