really appreciate the Survival mode. big points for it being customizable as well-- i've always lamented the lack of customization with these types of game modes. i remember when i played the Geometry Wars games back in the day the fact that it starts off so slow was what made me drop it fast but here you can set whatever level you want to start at, and other great features like being able to turn off environmental hazards. which starting off at level 0 isn't boring to begin with in this game thanks to the score chaining system.
i guess i'll treat this thread as the beat em up general; i picked up Fight'N Rage, Final Vendetta, and the new TMNT. i like FNR and FV, will talk more about them at another time, but first i gotta get this out of my system regarding TMNT.
my biggest problem is the enemy design. most enemies either throw out attacks just because you're vaguely around them or pre-emptively throw out instant-attacks the nanosecond you get in their range, so you can't get the first attack in. this already takes a giant stinky doodoo on the-- to put it in fighting game terms-- 'neutral' game; it puts the kibosh on normal movement & attacks and forces you to spam specific moves like the dive kick and running attacks to gain priority over their bullshit attacks. then when you combine that with the fact that there's an umpteenth number of super armored attacks & enemies, blocks, un-grabbable enemies, shields, projectiles, invincible wakeup attacks and so on, it cements the game into this defensive nightmare where you can't control an enemy or crowd whatsoever (you don't have any crowd control ability to begin with), you are at the complete mercy of them. you're desperately wanting to play proactively and control the flow of battle rather than having to bait & punish most enemies, desperately wanting to not have to mindlessly spam overpowered high priority attacks, desperately wanting to be able to attack for more than a second at a time but every other second you have to jump/walk out of the way/use your dodge-roll/etc. to avoid an attack from the enemy you're hitting or someone else-- it's a constant exercise in frustration, just really obnoxious to play.
the fundamentals are so non-existent here that it doesn't play like a beat em up at all, it plays like a 2d Dark Souls game where most of the 5-20 enemies on your screen are Dark Souls bosses, which is about as fun as it sounds. some more obnoxious design is that there's a straight up barrage of projectiles flying across the screen at all almost all times, and i'm including enemies like the dinosaurs within the definition of projectile here because of their constant super armored charge attacks-- lots of other enemies like that too. i mean, i know i've barely played any beat em ups but i've only seen careful, limited use of projectiles in quality beat em ups and i'm pretty fuckin confident it's for good reason, which is that all this does is further make the neutral game as brutal as humanly possible and further forces you to always be sprinting + slide kicks and jumping around + dive kicks.
the enemies are extremely Simon Says (ex. slide kick then uppercut on the black ninjas or you're in for a bad time, dive kick on the drones or you're in for a bad time, etc.), the movement is a sloppy imprecise mess due to the inertia, and so is attacking for 2 reasons; one is that if you're holding or have pressed any movement direction within the last second when you press the attack button your character will do this lunge variant of their initial normal attack-- which for most characters is considerably slower-- so your jabs are glacially slow in this game. the other reason is that there's this auto-aim to your attacks, particularly your running attacks, which i guess is their backwards way of trying to put a band-aid on their shitty movement and enemy movement design instead of making those good to begin with. and if god forbid you ever make the mistake of rolling out of your wakeup, you will inevitably wind up within the range of an enemy who will immediately, mercilessly, and justly knock you on your ass again via instant-attack for having the nerve to use a mechanic that the game gives you-- amateur hour!
there's other issues with this game but these are the most important ones. if you didn't feel like reading all that and just want the gist: it plays like shit and i don't recommend it (no i will not put that at the beginning of the post)
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