Retro-ish generic platformer sums up Nasty quite well. “Retro” when used to describe most games means that I will want to kill myself and be utterly miserable by the time I stop playing a game. Some people have the opposite reaction. I can say after much research, this game is “retro”.
We were kindly sent a review token from the developers and, reminiscing about my 90s platforming days, I leapt to the cause. Sadly, this game comes from the Mega Man school of thought rather than the Commander keen one. Some evil guy is enslaving the blah blah here are 100 levels. Kill all the enemies before time runs out to complete each one and collect points to go towards a high score and extra lives whilst you’re at it. Get some power ups if you really must.
Hate is a strong word. But I hate games like these.
FFUUYOUBBQPONIESGODDAMITWHATTHEHELL! That about sums up the noises I made whilst playing this game. Knowing I’m good at platformers, but hating idea that “the challenge is the joy” which retro fans harp on about (even though they are blatantly wrong), I set the game on Easy mode, the easiest of the three levels, and was promptly driven to mild insanity.
It’s a very defined game. As a programmer I can see exactly how everything fits together. But that’s just it, it feels very smooth and calculated. Only it’s missing the calculation where level design difficulty is factored in. I was stuck on some of the early levels for ages, but breezed through dozens of the latter ones.
Jumping is floaty in a way that’s hard to describe: Apart from jumping several times your own high you always move at the same speed when in the air. Again, this would be put on the “annoying fault” pile by people such as myself, if I didn’t know somebody would move it to the “retro charm” pile when I had my back turned.
This retro feel seeps all the way to the save system. You can save every 10 levels and you have fixed number of continues for each level. If you run out of continues (as I did, on the penultimate level I might add) then it’s game over and back to the last save point. Again, I would put that save set up on the “why the hell would you do that” pile, where it not for the evil glares of platformer and retro fans.
Standard this, expected that.
Other than my personal inability to enjoy this kind of precision-jumping, careful-timing, fuck-you-boss-battle game, everything else is about as you would expect it. Each level has a theme, enemies all repeat and are varied just enough. It has music and sound and things are coloured in and all that. It’s most definitely a game that’s been polished, just not really experimented with.
There’s also a small collection of offline multiplayer modes to play with. You can buddy up and play co-op with a friend, or venture into four player death match and other such things. Sadly there’s no Xbox Live multiplayer, but in light of how much I swear and how grumpy I get playing games like these, that’s probably a good thing.
Some Other Points Worth Mentioning…
- As I said there are 100 levels, so there’s plenty to keep you busy.
- I didn’t finish the game. Bursting a blood vessel to get past level 99 (where I got stuck) wasn’t worth it for me.
Nasty is about as generic as you can get. It’s very well made for what it is, and the game as a whole will definitely appeal to those masochistic retro revivalists that I know lurk around forums complaining games these days are too easy.
You should play this game if…
… your tolerance to frustration is higher than mine.
Final Score
An average and well polished platformer with enough content to keep you busy.
