Before I start I’d like to say that I won’t be spoiling the story here but I do go over the content of the game which includes some things that may or may not be considered spoiler-y. You’ve been warned.

After finishing, and I use that term loosely, 198X, I decided to do some extra research on the game from the kickstarter site and the official website to see what they had to say about it. The site descibes the game as an “arcade epic”. It’s a “coming of age story told through multiple games and genres”.

If that’s true, then I don’t know what the heck I just finished because that’s not how I’d describe it. And that’s not because it took me a couple hours to clear. It’s not even because the game ends with a “to be continued”, something that I can’t seem to find anywhere in any advertisement that would’ve been useful to know.

No, the biggest problem I have with their application of the word “epic” is that in order to be epic, there has to be a story. This game, even looked at as an episode of a larger plan, a larger piece, has no story. During cutscenes – which do look really good to their credit – you get breadcrumbs of background in the form of this androgynous teenager named Kid who looks oddly familiar to me, who tries to sound really deep when he or she narrates, but nothing in this big, beautiful world grates like a teenager going “uuuuugh, everything is lame, I used to like things but now I don’t, parents just don’t get it, uuuuugh” during every cutscene. These cutscenes don’t move anything along and then at the end of the game you just get stuck on…I guess I’ll call it a cliffhanger? I thought they were supposed to make you anxious for the next installment but maybe I’m just old fashioned. You want to see a cliffhanger done right? Watch an episode of the 1960’s Batman tv show.

Stories described as “coming of age” shouldn’t involve so much entitled whining.

So that brings me to the games. On the website, the games are described like there’s a lot of meat to them but in reality they play a lot more like demos. Demos that don’t move the story, either. The whole game can be cleared in like 2 hours, tops. I usually take longer than the average bear to play through things and I admittedly fell asleep during one of the scenes and started that section over. Because, you know. It’s an arcade epic. That I somehow fell asleep during. 

Each individual game does have really good production values, but their quality dips in some spots, specifically during the ninja game. The promo pics make it look like it’s going to be an homage to Shinobi, but it’s actually an endless runner. What really grinds my gears about this is that #1, I hate endless runners, and #2, it’s the one game that drags on for way too long at 5 stages compared to the other games having half that, and dying puts you back at the beginning of whatever stage you’re in, forcing you to memorize the order of the level or die again and start over…again. So yeah! Hilarious fun that won’t make your blood pressure go up if you’re not paying attention to what you’re doing.

Otherwise, the beat-em-up section is a great intro into the game as the animation is excellent, the sound effects thud and crunch just like you’d hear in Final Fight or Streets of Rage. The Outrun-style racing game is a little boring but plays just fine, the Gradius or R-type style game plays fine and the RPG at the end is kind of stupid and felt like filler. They try to use it to build some sort of climax in the story but it felt really flat to me and ultimately didn’t lead anywhere. Also it’s so linear that you have no choice but to get killed repeatedly so the xp carries over to each new try, until you level up enough to finish it. So again, it’s stupid.

So if you can’t already tell, I really didn’t like this game. It’s not broken but it’s something that I went into blindly, knowing there’s always a risk to that, and it didn’t pay off this time. What little story was there wasn’t interesting and I still don’t really even know what in particular it was about now that it’s over. Stories described as “coming of age” shouldn’t involve so much entitled whining.