What it does do is share these story beats through cinematic cutscenes, sparking life into tired tropes and through dialogue shared between Shadow and the NPCs he encounters. It’s all very predictable and does little to reinvent the storytelling wheel. Players take on the role of Shadow, a ninja who is on a mission to rescue his clan from machinery that has plagued the land. Developer, Aarne Hunziker, has been known to reference Mario and Contra too, and there’s no doubt that these gaming experiences have shaped the product on offer here. Their influences are clear as day, with Ninja Gaiden taking front and centre, and a likeness to Castlevania and Mega Man too. With a development team comprising of one developer, a composer and a producer, it’s an incredible showcase of talent. Rooted firmly in a throwback 8-bit era, Cyber Shadow is a Ninja Gaiden-esque side-scrolling action-platformer developed by Mechanical Head Studios. I have always been a fan of nature, but I cannot stand these mechanical birds. When all was said and done? Cyber Shadow became one of those games I will always look back fondly on. When we hit a rough patch, well, let’s just say that a few choice words were shared. When I was loving it, I absolutely adored it. From loving to loathing and back to loving again, Cyber Shadow and I shared a love-hate relationship from the get-go. Cyber Shadow is one of the most difficult games I’ve ever played, and it’s equally as difficult to definitively review. If the Bad Boys 2 reference above was lost on you, I’ll lay it out for you now. But guess what? It ain’t gonna break me, Switch Players. Yacht Club Games sent it here to test me. To make matters worse, some of these segments feature enemies placed in such a way that it’s basically impossible for you not to be hit (and therefore, die) at least once by them.Woosah! Woooosah! Whilst playing Cyber Shadow late one night, I had an epiphany. There isn’t anything as annoying as dying over and over again in a (slightly clunky) platforming section because your character flies back whenever a small cybernetic mosquito touches him. One thing the developer sadly borrowed from these classic games is the inclusion of knockback. There are some issues regarding the gameplay, however. The level design is quite reminiscent of classic Mega Man games, while the upgrade system, character movement, boss battles, and sidearm “ammunition” reminded me a lot of Castlevania III, as well as its adoptive brother, Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon. Cyber Shadow‘s gameplay feels like an odd mix between Ninja Gaiden, Mega Man, and Castlevania. You slash your sword in a near identical fashion, but you’re much heavier, a bit slower, and nowhere near as acrobatic. “Are you a bad enough ninja to rescue the clan?”Īt first glance, you would imagine that your main character would move around like Ryu Hayabusa in Ninja Gaiden, but that’s just half truth. It’s not perfect and nowhere near as impressive as Yacht Club’s own works, or other retro-inspired games like the near flawless The Messenger, but it’s still worth your time. To top it off, Cyber Shadow is quite good. With the exception of the soundtrack, which was composed by none other than Jake Kaufman (so you can already imagine this is top-tier stuff), the entire game was designed, drawn, and coded by a single person, Finland-based Aarne Hunziker. It’s a NES-ish action game, you don’t want to waste your time too much on storytelling when there’s so much slashing and platforming to be done.įirst things first, Cyber Shadow was fully developed by a single person, and that alone is already worth a ton of praise. It’s not exactly a deep plot, and honestly, that’s for the best. You take control of a cyborg ninja in a quest to rescue your former clan from a bunch of evil robots and cybernetic hybrids. Cyber Shadow’s platforming segments can be a nuisance at times.Ĭyber Shadow follows suit in the tradition of indie games being cautiously developed to resemble a NES game in every single way, be it in terms of graphics, scrolling, sound, and the fact you only use two action buttons on your controller.
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