Guilty of the unfathomable evil of making Strider Hiryu less cunty, so I’m not crazy on this one, but I do think it’s worth putting a spotlight on a metroidvania this lean. Strider 2014 occupies a weird in-between space between schema by having the bones of Strider 2 (blisteringly fast arcade score attack action), and being a metroidvania (wallhug like a dopey trout picking up Fisher-Price blocks to place into shaped slots) and it straddles the line…………. decently well?? Has an incredibly scant 4 hours completion time accomplished through carving story progression in a linear track across the world map, reminiscent of Metroid Fusion if anything. It keeps up the momentum surprisingly well and it’s complemented by Strider’s fast and responsive freewheeling toolset. The main issue for me is that Strider 2014 is surprisingly averse to any form of vertical progression, so the open world aspect feels like a bloated afterthought. It doesn’t help that the ratio of secrets/pickups being actual upgrades is completely overshadowed by how many of them are fucking unlockable secret missions, intel and concept art. Puts its best foot forward with a great opening hour; the rooftop-hopping set design is gorgeous and dynamic before it turns into sewer & techno corridor mulch, simple-to-counter enemies so your charge is rarely halted. As the difficulty ramps up it becomes less of a sleek and stylish action game and more of an exercise in frustration as the screen is littered with knockback bullets and colour-coded shielded enemies that take a steadily increasing number of hits to kill. This all culminates into a ridiculously grating final act that feels like a complete misread on what makes Strider halfway compelling. You can tell Shadow Complex was a key reference point and maybe it farcking shouldn’t have been. All this being said this is my favourite Strider game lol.
7/10
Meio truncado em situações específicas mas bom de verdade
Meio truncado em situações específicas mas bom de verdade
A surprising return on an very overlooked game
Feels like a low budget action game, very hard to call this a Metroidvania.
Eu achei divertido, gostei das batalhas contra boss, achei bem simples. Não gosto muito do estilo, mas esse foi bem maneiro de jogar
This review contains spoilers
I'll out myself as a bit of an underclassman in the world of Metroidvanias with this one. 2014's Strider is technically one of the only action platformers I've dedicated much time too in my entire “career” as a capital-G gamer. (Aside from Hollow Knight which I'm too terrible at to actually progress.) And even saying "much time" implies I covered every nook and cranny in the game's overworld... which I didn't. I'm a hog for narrative, even in games where narrative is secondary to intrinsic play, but peeling back the layers of Strider's world through the varied boss encounters and collectibles started to wane on me as my skill level with these types of games hovers around below average, and my patience was being hacked away minute by minute like Hiryu slashing through cyborg Soviets with plasma blades.
Double Helix, a studio primarily known for movie tie-in games and underwhelming sequels during the seventh gen had found some acclaim in the Xbox One's exclusive Killer Instinct revival and then, under Capcom's banner, this lean, mean hack-and-scale soft reboot of their dormant Strider series. It's been sitting in my library for ten years now, so hey, why not give it the fairest of fair shakes?
In positive points of order: the world design, enemy design, and general atmosphere of Strider are impeccable. Full of this oppressive, brutalist, Russo-fantasy architecture that allows Strider Hiryu to take advantage of the game's impressive climbing mechanics as well as enough variety in said architecture that it doesn't feel like a shameless asset flip. The enemies that populate the "biomes" (are we cool with calling stages and levels "biomes" now? I digress...) range from your typical XP farm grunts to mini Shai-Huluds and sometimes expected, sometimes unexpected mini bosses who will more likely than not send you into teeth-gnashing rage early in the experience.
Out with the good, in with the not-so good: Hiryu's clingy-ness and the absence of analog controls make the precision movements required in some of these encounters a frustrating chore as even one misstep in their final phases will send you trudging back through a short boss run or an unskippable cutscene, neither of which appeals to me as someone who grew up in a post-quicksave world. These issues become diminutive as you unlock more of Hiryu’s moveset, including powerful special attacks that will even the odds with crowd enemies or slippery phase changes. However, different problems crop up in place once the game re-balances itself in the endgame, and when I say the final boss arena is one of the most unintuitive, unnavigable pieces of shit I’ve had the displeasure of hacking and slashing in, I say it with my whole chest.
Strider is at its best when the control of movement and combat are in-sync with the player, but more often than not, it feels as though the game is disregarding or misreading your inputs. Couple an absolutely gnarly lack of i-frames that consistently lead to minor and major setbacks, and you’ve got a holistically muddled experience where the bulk of enjoyment stems from paying attention to things in the game that are not the game’s primary focus. (The sky art, background stages, bespoke animations, and concept art are fantastic!)
Credit where its due, this game does end with you killing a god and then riding its corpse from space into orbit, so let’s just settle on mixed bag and call it for now. I’ll return when I’ve put in the requisite hours with this franchise and Metroidvanias in general. That’s when the real gospel comes…
Double Helix, a studio primarily known for movie tie-in games and underwhelming sequels during the seventh gen had found some acclaim in the Xbox One's exclusive Killer Instinct revival and then, under Capcom's banner, this lean, mean hack-and-scale soft reboot of their dormant Strider series. It's been sitting in my library for ten years now, so hey, why not give it the fairest of fair shakes?
In positive points of order: the world design, enemy design, and general atmosphere of Strider are impeccable. Full of this oppressive, brutalist, Russo-fantasy architecture that allows Strider Hiryu to take advantage of the game's impressive climbing mechanics as well as enough variety in said architecture that it doesn't feel like a shameless asset flip. The enemies that populate the "biomes" (are we cool with calling stages and levels "biomes" now? I digress...) range from your typical XP farm grunts to mini Shai-Huluds and sometimes expected, sometimes unexpected mini bosses who will more likely than not send you into teeth-gnashing rage early in the experience.
Out with the good, in with the not-so good: Hiryu's clingy-ness and the absence of analog controls make the precision movements required in some of these encounters a frustrating chore as even one misstep in their final phases will send you trudging back through a short boss run or an unskippable cutscene, neither of which appeals to me as someone who grew up in a post-quicksave world. These issues become diminutive as you unlock more of Hiryu’s moveset, including powerful special attacks that will even the odds with crowd enemies or slippery phase changes. However, different problems crop up in place once the game re-balances itself in the endgame, and when I say the final boss arena is one of the most unintuitive, unnavigable pieces of shit I’ve had the displeasure of hacking and slashing in, I say it with my whole chest.
Strider is at its best when the control of movement and combat are in-sync with the player, but more often than not, it feels as though the game is disregarding or misreading your inputs. Couple an absolutely gnarly lack of i-frames that consistently lead to minor and major setbacks, and you’ve got a holistically muddled experience where the bulk of enjoyment stems from paying attention to things in the game that are not the game’s primary focus. (The sky art, background stages, bespoke animations, and concept art are fantastic!)
Credit where its due, this game does end with you killing a god and then riding its corpse from space into orbit, so let’s just settle on mixed bag and call it for now. I’ll return when I’ve put in the requisite hours with this franchise and Metroidvanias in general. That’s when the real gospel comes…
Very fun action platformer, not perfect tho, it's kinda dull sometimes