Recent reviews by Incognito

Came from a 2D fighting game background and can´t recommend this game enough. It has good online, progression, it´s free to try and above all that, it´s fun as hell.

If you play only for online matches this game is a bit conflicting.

The game has a lot of room to improve, essentially everything that happens between the round start and the game end is immaculate, the gameplay is fun, fast, tense, and awesome, it´s the surrounding system of the lobby that makes it sometimes hard to boot up the game.

Good game for beginners and seasoned players with a vibrant community, if you are hopping on, do it early, the first few months of a fighting game are magical.

It has good netcode and it´s an essentially good game.

This is an outstanding fighting game, good online, great mechanics. I do not like the theme at all, but well, fighting games in 2020 I rather have it play good online than it be more visually interesting to me.

ArcSys get your ♥♥♥♥ together.

Simply godlike.

I am no artist, and the software is so intuitive, I absolutely love it.

So first and foremost I want to say that the game is good, but I would consider buying on a sale if I were you.

Off the top of my head, like pretty much every review, I did like the art a lot. The pixel art is cohesive through the game and the music and voice acting are interesting. Love all the Spanish references and the atmosphere, it is seriously outstanding and I can´t give enough credit for it as it is.

The combat is ok, I wouldn´t say that it´s as snappy as dead cells, but it works as expected, the parry mechanic is not unconsistent and the abilities that I have unlocked so far are useful, but it gets kinda repetitive design wise, you have the guy that you can´t attack from the front that performs a vertical slash, the one that does the same thing, but you can´t attack from the back, a couple of projectile mobs, the basic mobs are all there, but outside of boss fights, I don´t really see this pushed anywhere where other games like the Messenger or Dead Cells don´t go. The bosses on the other hand, while they fall on the easier side, they are interesting and really top that Darkish Souls feel. Also the damage by contact on a game like this makes little to no sense to me, make enemies stop me on my tracks by fighting, not damage me by being on their close vecinity. That was a really odd design choice.

So we got the intent of the opressive atmosphere from dark souls, and this is reflected also on the platforming, one mistake could instantly send you back to the bonfire, but with the stakes so high, I seriously expected more responsive and consistent controls, so far I am pretty sure I have died to spikes or by falling into nothingness around 50 times, while I have been killed by the mobs like 4 or 5 times. The controls are not there with the platforming, and the bonfire positioning really is not doing this game any favours. You can´t travel from bonfire to bonfire, so it´s purely checkpoint placement here, and it is so painful so many times to just go back through a platforming segment that it feels like exploration is discouraged, why would I take the risk of the jump to get that item there if one mistake of the ledge grabbing not working, or the wall climbing giving me a swing at the grabbable wall instead of getting stuck can just ruin most of the other exploration I have done?

I am ending up straight up avoiding detours because of the absolute hassle of this segments.

I really want to like this game more than I do, and I really want it to succeed, but it has fallen a little bit short of my maybe unrealistic expectations.

Katana Zero is a fast paced action platformer developed by Akiisoft. Set in an 80´s cyberpunk-neon city, we play as a hitman Samurai with a special perception of time and suffering from a memory loss condition, which allows for exciting instant-death combat with a bullet-time element that will be key in order to carry on each mission.

Story and Character development
I am going to be quite brief on this aspect of the game, since everything is shrouded in mystery, every hint I give might be a hint that you might not experience and that is just unfair.
What I want to focus on is the delivery of this story, because it truly is for everyone, do you want to just skip conversations and move on with the game? Largely, you can do that. Do you prefer, on the other hand, to explore the conversations and role play each scenario to see where each lead takes you? Perfect!, you also can do that.
The story is delivered in a very special way, with bits and pieces that the game allows you to tie together uncovering the past that not even the main character knows he has. Even though I love the way the game makes me want to uncover the truth, and how much I liked the delivery of the fairly grim narrative I believe in the end it falls slightly short for the expectations that the game has been building up to. I would argue that, while not being bad per se, the writing is the weakest part of the game.

Art and music
Katana Zero is easily one of my favourite modern pixel art games that I have played over the past year. There is this amazing attention to detail on each animation, with every bit falling into the VHS theme and the nature of the scene you are watching.
I think what surprised me the most was the lighting, I did not expect high quality lights being put here and there and even though the blue and pink gradients on the hit animations, or during the bullet time are beautiful and feel awesome (especially the second you deflect a bullet), there is something about the elegant lighting that this game shows at any given time that made me fall in love with it.

The music is not behind, made by Ludowic and Bill Kiley, it has a special protagonism, with each level starting with you pressing “play” on your walkman the music does not only feel that is good for the general feel of the level, but something to be enjoyed while carrying out the missions as the main character.

Gameplay
Katana zero has incredibly fluid controls and combat, starts a little bit slow, but after the first few levels it starts to ramp up the difficulty until every encounter starts feeling more like a puzzle than combat due to the trial and error nature of it. The combat allows for a lot of expression, the katana slashes can be directed on specific directions, and the invulnerability while can be creatively abused to get within slashing range a lot of the time.
My main issue with combat is not what you can do really, I love how it feels, i love how it looks, I love how the game approaches failure as if the level you played was just a complicated plan happening in your head and only when you find that successful strategy, you can move forward. My main issue with the combat are the enemies. There are just a handful of enemies that perform one specific attack, so it is really consistent in the way you approach each situation, but it can get repetitive. There is no surprise to it, the knife guy will always cross knives with you and put your slashing ability on cooldown unless you dodge it, the shotgun guy can´t be deflected, but you can dodge it with the roll etc…
This reinforces the “puzzle” feeling of each complex scenario, since every enemy behaves the same and there are only two or three enemy types on the screen at any given encounter, it’s more about finding the right way to overcome the scenario than it is about outmaneuvering your opponents even though there are more than one or two ways of approaching each situation.

Menus and accesibility
Due to the VHS theme and the intense effects we are given a lot of options for people that suffer from seizures, you can disable entire effects and shaders like the rewind FX that you get on death, the screen shake or the hit pause that can be a little bit too much at times.
There are remappable controls, with the ability to assign more than one key to each movement, and good details like being able to change how we activate the bullet time effect from a “hold” to a “tap”. You can modify the response time and the text speed, but there are no further difficulty settings beyond the default and harder ones. The bullet time effect can be handy to make the game a more adequate experience for people that can’t keep up with the default fast pace, but sometimes it might prove not enough for some players towards the end of the game, when encounters are longer and the meter ends before you can finish each enemy off.

Conclussion
I recommend Katana Zero to anyone that loves this blend of fast-paced game, I think its fun, enjoyable, very speedrunnable if you are into that, and that tells a nice story filled with memorable moments both narrative and gameplay wise.

This is a copy of my Medium Review[medium.com].

Lo que me esperaba como un juego de plataformas con estética 32 bit se ha convertido en una aventura introspectiva en la que nuestra protagonista, Madeline, que sin tener ningún tipo de experiencia escalando busca superarse a si misma y escalar el pico más alto. La montaña Celeste.

Historia y personajes

Quiero empezar por esta faceta del juego, ya que ha sido la que mas me ha sorprendido sin duda. Celeste es un juego introspectivo en el que nos aventuramos a escalar la montaña y la experiencia de plataformeo es intensa, pero no solo por su dificultad. A nivel emocional los personajes son extremadamente humanos.

No hablamos de súper-heroínas y malos malosos, hablamos de una chica que quiere superarse, una chica que no es perfecta, que tiene sus problemas personales, que cuando tiene dudas, llama a su madre, que evoluciona a lo largo de la historia y nos hace sentir que evolucionamos con ella. Y los malos, bueno, nos abren la pregunta “¿Son tan malos?” realmente creo que no. En este juego se batallan diversos tipos de enemigos, pero al igual que los personajes secundarios y nuestra protagonista, la sensación que dan es de ser tremendamente humanos, de tener un trasfondo fuera del “no pasarás porque yo lo digo” típico de este género. La historia no solo utiliza escenas entre nivel y nivel para dirigir la historia, sino que realmente utilizan el juego para expresar lo que Celeste vive. Ese sentimiento de autosuperación, rápidamente se vuelve nuestro después de morir treinta o cuarenta veces en la misma pantalla. Como jugadores, crecemos con Celeste, y ella con nosotros.

Arte y ambientación

Gran parte de la ambientación de Celeste viene de su elaborada banda sonora, que junto con la historia nos hacen sumergirnos de lleno en el juego y ser Madeline.

Las animaciones, a pesar de estar en un entorno pixelado son extremadamente creativas, y, acompañadas de los diálogos, le dan al juego las expresiones faciales que los píxeles no pueden darnos y nos hacen entender perfectamente cómo se sienten los personajes. Nos ayudan a conectar con ellos.

Durante el tiempo de juego, nos vamos encontrando con diferentes mecánicas, todas ellas están visualmente refinadas, dejando un juego no solo entretenido e interesante, sino fluido, inmersivo, y simplemente precioso.

Jugabilidad

Como comentaba anteriormente, el juego es muy fluido, los controles, personalizables al gusto de cada uno, y el diseño de niveles es prácticamente impoluto.

Cada nuevo capítulo nos encontramos con mecánicas nuevas, y el juego nos las presenta de manera clara. Ya que morir en este juego no te lleva al principio del capítulo o al anterior punto de guardado, sino al comienzo de la “sección” de plataformas en las que te encuentras, te puedes permitir juguetear con las diversas mecánicas, y probar distintas maneras de superar cada nivel.

El juego tiene coleccionables, es decir, a lo largo de la historia puedes ir recogiendo fresas, esparcidas y escondidas por todos los niveles, caras B, que te permiten acceso a versiones alternativas de los niveles, y que, honestamente son el infierno de jugar, y corazones, que consigues en las caras B, y de los cuales necesitas 4 para conseguir entrar en un nivel adicional tras acabar el juego. Y os adelanto que merece la pena.

Mi único problema con las caras B es que su dificultad es totalmente de otro mundo comparado con el juego, es decir el nivel de dificultad de la primera cara B es similar al de los últimos niveles. Ésto hace que jugar las caras B según las desbloqueas sea un poco anticlimático, y que la mejor manera de disfrutar del juego sea jugándolo entero, luego las caras B, y acabar con el nivel adicional.

Una de las cosas que más me ha llamado la atención de Celeste es la libertad que dejan los desarrolladores para finalizar niveles manteniendo la dificultad del juego. A pesar de que los niveles son complejos y a veces tienes que pararte a pensar y decirte a ti mismo “Espera, ¿como puedo pasar?”, y, a menudo, hay más de una respuesta a esa pregunta.

Antes de finalizar la parte de jugabilidad y llegar a la conclusión, quiero llamar la atención a una opción llamada “Modo asistencia”, el cual te permite modificar la velocidad del juego, hacerte invencible, dar resistencia o saltos infinitos o hasta saltarse capítulos enteros.

Y generalmente no hablaría de las opciones de dificultad de un juego, pero el enfoque que le da Celeste a las mismas es interesante. Vienen con un mensaje aclarando que Celeste esta diseñado para ser desafiante, y que los diseñadores creen que la dificultad es esencial para la experiencia de juego, pero que entienden que cada jugador es distinto, y que si Celeste te resulta inaccesible, el modo asistencia te permite disfrutar del juego.

Considero que este acercamiento a la dificultad es genial y tengo que mencionarlo. La dificultad es un medio en los videojuegos, en God of War te sientes como un semidios destrozando hordas de enemigos sin problema ninguno, y eso es parte de lo que es Kratos. En Dark Souls, el mundo está en tu contra y cualquier enemigo puede matarte si te descuidas. La dificultad es parte de la identidad de un juego y este enfoque mantiene la identidad del juego haciendo que el mismo sea accesible.

Conclusión

Celeste es uno de los mejores títulos a los que he jugado en mi vida, la cantidad de contenido que hay en el juego hace que el precio parezca una ganga, los personajes, la historia, la jugabilidad y la banda sonora hacen de este juego una auténtica obra de arte, y creo que debería de ser parte de toda librería que se precie.

I wanted to play for a bit and got hooked.

Insanely fluid gameplay, keeps itself fresh by adding guns as you try to clear the gungeon, it is amazingly fun and there are a couple of 1% chance situations that make the runs even more enjoyable. Not gonna lie, this game is hard, and it gets harder the more content you want to get, but it´s definitely worth it.

I recommend binding Alt F4 to a macro button on the mouse, the ragequitting gets real on this one.