The Takeover is a beat em up title that wears it’s admiration for games of old on its sleeve. Playing through this title I saw nods to Final Fight, Streets of Rage, Mortal Kombat, Killer Instinct, King of Fighters, After Burner, Outrun and probably a few others. The takeover is clearly one big love letter to 90’s gaming.

Now while the Takeover leaves a lot of room for refinement, I can safely say, this is one of my favorite games of 2020.

The first thing that drew me to The Takeover were its visuals, this game is beautiful. Yeah, the graphics have this shiny look to it, but it works for me, I absolutely love the way this looks. I also love the size of the characters. At first I thought they might be too big and end up hogging the real estate, but no, it really worked fine. There were a few times where it looked like the game would have benefited from the camera zoomed out a bit more, especially when you found yourself fighting enemies off the screen, but for most parts, it worked.

I didn’t expect much of a story here, and I didn’t get one. What was here seemed like a mosh pit of a few games from the nineties. The two lead character’s daughter has been kidnapped by some gang and you team up with two other characters to get her back. I like the way the cut scenes were done in a comic book style. Reminds me of Shank. Another thing that reminded me of Shank, was the blood, I like this.

The voice acting was decent B-Movie, nothing to write home about, but nothing to complain about either. Sometimes I think developers deliberately create these cheezy sounding dialogues to add to the nostalgia.

The game play. You’ve got the basic move set, what’s expected, you can punch, kick, grab, throw, mix up some combos and the special moves. The two specials I know about are one, a room clearing special and two, a rage meter. The room clearer doesn’t do as much damage as I’d like, and while it’s happening, other than seeing people still walking around unharmed, you can also get damaged by said people. The Rage gauge is cool, it deals a major amount of damage and although it’s timed, it takes a decent amount of time to run out.

The controls are a bit stiff, this is one of the sections that could really use some of that triple A refinement, it just didn’t seem as fluid and seamless as it should be. And here’s my biggest gripe, hit detection. This is the lowest part of The Takeover, it is so bad that if you’re really not into this game the way I am, you will rage quit. It’s straight up ridiculous. I understand this is a 2.5D game and as such, you may experience difficulty lining your character up with whatever you’d like to interact with in said 2.5D space, but this got downright absurd. It felt at times like you were expected to be precisely in line with the enemy in order to make impact, and then other times, you’d be flailing about landing hits. This got really annoying in the later levels.

The Takeover also tries to spice things up a bit by offering somewhat of a change of pace with bonus stages that reminds me of Outrun and Afterburner. These stages offer you the opportunity to cop an extra life, should you survive till the end.

Flaws and all, The Takeover is still one of my favorite games of 2020.

Indie greatness.

The Takeover is a beat em up title that wears it’s admiration for games of old on its sleeve. Playing through this title I saw nods to Final Fight, Streets of Rage, Mortal Kombat, Killer Instinct, King of Fighters, After Burner, Outrun and probably a few others. The takeover is clearly one big love letter to 90’s gaming. Now while the Takeover leaves a lot of room for refinement, I can safely say, this is one of my favorite games of 2020. The first thing that drew me to The Takeover were its visuals, this game is beautiful. Yeah, the graphics have this shiny look to it, but it works for me, I absolutely love the way this looks. I also love the size of the characters. At first I thought they might be too big and end up hogging the real estate, but no, it really worked fine. There were a few times where it looked like the game would have benefited from the camera zoomed out a bit more, especially when you found yourself fighting enemies off the screen, but for most parts, it worked. I didn’t expect much of a story here, and I didn’t get one. What was here seemed like a mosh pit of a few games from the nineties. The two lead character’s daughter has been kidnapped by some gang and you team up with two other characters to get her back. I like the way the cut scenes were done in a comic book style. Reminds me of Shank. Another thing that reminded me of Shank, was the blood, I like this. The voice acting was decent B-Movie, nothing to write home about, but nothing to complain about either. Sometimes I think developers deliberately create these cheezy sounding dialogues to add to the nostalgia. The game play. You’ve got the basic move set, what’s expected, you can punch, kick, grab, throw, mix up some combos and the special moves. The two specials I know about are one, a room clearing special and two, a rage meter. The room clearer doesn’t do as much damage as I’d like, and while it’s happening, other than seeing people still walking around unharmed, you can also get damaged by said people. The Rage gauge is cool, it deals a major amount of damage and although it’s timed, it takes a decent amount of time to run out. The controls are a bit stiff, this is one of the sections that could really use some of that triple A refinement, it just didn’t seem as fluid and seamless as it should be. And here’s my biggest gripe, hit detection. This is the lowest part of The Takeover, it is so bad that if you’re really not into this game the way I am, you will rage quit. It’s straight up ridiculous. I understand this is a 2.5D game and as such, you may experience difficulty lining your character up with whatever you’d like to interact with in said 2.5D space, but this got downright absurd. It felt at times like you were expected to be precisely in line with the enemy in order to make impact, and then other times, you’d be flailing about landing hits. This got really annoying in the later levels. The Takeover also tries to spice things up a bit by offering somewhat of a change of pace with bonus stages that reminds me of Outrun and Afterburner. These stages offer you the opportunity to cop an extra life, should you survive till the end. Flaws and all, The Takeover is still one of my favorite games of 2020. Indie greatness.