Being a long-time fan of Metroidvanias and a not-so-much-anymore fan of anime, Afterimage was pretty much everything I thought it was going to be. I was sure the game would be fun, it would look nice, but it would be a little campy in certain areas cough voice acting cough while doing its darnedest to tell a story I did not pay much attention to. While I couldn’t really tell you what was going in in the story beat for beat, other aspects of the game made up for it and made the game an overall enjoyable experience.

Gameplay is pretty fun. You have many different weapons to choose from and you can mix and match weapons and armor to fit your play style. The boss battles were tense and varied. There was also quite a lot of variety in the enemies you faced. It never felt like you were fighting the same enemies over and over again across environments. They felt perfectly crafted to be where they were...most of the time, at least. You can upgrade various skills to suit your style. If you want to use scythes then go to the scythe tree and make them stronger. Greatswords, blades, whips, staffs, magic? Same deal. Upgrade and get yourself new abilities for the weapons and find cooler ways to fight your way through to the end. The game isn’t too challenging if you do a bit of grinding. I never felt like I had to redo a whole lot if I died.

One thing I didn’t like was the lack of sounds for some of the enemies. It’s like they put their entire sound budget into the soundtrack and the voice acting. Some enemies had no sound to them other than some generic swiping sound. Big enemies would open their mouths to assert their soon to be short-lived dominance and would make no noise whatsoever. Some of the boss battles were just forgettable because their music wasn’t cutting it.

The visuals are the absolute strongpoint of this game. Right off the bat the game throws good music and breathtaking visuals to tell its story. Every area in the game is visually unique from one another, they have been crafted in a way that gives them their own identity. Every area has unique enemies, music and even gear. You’ll find certain weapons that mirror the environments in which they were found. The music was very well done, but maybe a bit too soft. I had similar problems with Ender Lilies and Breath of the Wild. The music given is good, but it just didn’t evoke that sense of action or adventure in me. The soft pianos didn’t quite fit with the struggle against some enemies. Some of the music, especially in places like Town of the Exiled and Field of Pyro, stand out as more engaging music.

And yeah, the environments were beautiful, but they just seemed to keep popping up. I don’t want to say there were too many, but I think the game would have benefitted from omitting a few. Just when you thought you saw everything and were close to finishing the game, you’d run into a brand new area with brand new everything and brand new hours of gameplay. I don’t want to come off as ungrateful or make it sound like playing this game is a slog, but I personally got a little annoyed every time after the 10th environment when I’d stumble into a new location. Like, I get it, you’re good at environmental design, now may I please finish this game? I’m not even talking about extremely detailed areas like Forest Foregone, I mean areas like Heart of Veins or Halcyon Veins, which have fewer than five enemies. I don’t even think the Albedo Tower needed to be included. I spent just under 30 hours to get most of the endings, but the game felt a lot longer. I was six areas in and the place I was supposed to go to was still barely visible on the world map from where I was. Speaking of maps, the option to enable a mini map (if one wished) isn’t necessary, but would have been nice.

Despite seeing heavy influences from other Metroidvanias like Ori, Hollow Knight and Ender Lilies, Afterimage manages to feel like it’s own game. I never got the feeling I was playing Hollow Knight: Afterimage Edition. I’d recommend it.

Astro Boy: Omega Factor is quite the remarkable game, especially amongst its peers on the GameBoy Advance.

The story is enjoyable, but maybe a little tangled at first. First you’ll start in a bustling city, then you go to an island, then space, then the arctic, then to the past, then to the future where you’ll fight in a tournament of robots. I couldn’t help but feel like I was being thrown around to different areas with no true direction in the story. Narratively things start to make more sense after you see the credits for the first time. After those credits, the real game begins. Fortunately, the story not only starts to make more sense, but also gets more interesting after you start the Rebirth portion of the game. The story will have you going around from place to place finding NPCs to guide you and give you clues to your next destination. There will be twists, intrigue, and revelations to make your experience all the more enjoyable.

I believe most aspects of the art in this game are done really well. The backgrounds are gorgeous and detailed. There wasn’t really a time in the game where I was bored at what I was looking at. Even the enemies, despite maybe not having a variation of types, are all distinguished by sizes and colors. The bigger they are, the stronger they are. Different colors on enemies will also dictte how those enemies will attack.

I think the mechanics of this game shine the most. It’s not just a brawler, portions of the game will have you flying at high speeds incorporating a bullet hell style gameplay, and other portions will have you flying at low speeds fighting a boss. These gameplay styles are switched up at normal intervals, so the gameplay never gets too stale or repetitive. Dashing gives you invincibility frames, so you can fly through enemies and avoid their projectiles and punches without taking any damage.

NPCs not only play a massive part in the story, they also play a big part in how the mechanics enrich gameplay. Astro Boy will upgrade his abilities by finding and interacting with NPCs. Astro Boy can have his health, punching power, laser power, dash abilities among others upgraded to help him in combat. The more you upgrade, the more powerful they get and the more useful they get. Upgrading your senses with let Astro Boy see in the dark, or see through fog, it will even sense the presence of a hidden NPC. Upgrading your lasers not only increases the damage, but it also increases the area of attack which can be useful in many parts of the game. The only problem with the NPCs is that maybe there are a bit too many included in the game. There is a pretty large gallery of all the NPCs, some of which you may forget that you found. This may be a problem especially if the story requires you to find them again.

Gameplay is mostly fluid, but can be severely punishing and the combat mechanics take some getting used to. I think I may have had a GameShark when I played this when I was younger because I don’t remember dying so much. Even on normal mode enemies hit considerably hard. Mid to end game some of them can take you down in two hits and a boss has the ability to take you down in one even if you have your health maxed out. Enemies could attack you and you wouldn’t even notice because maybe they’re hidden. Some of the bosses take up more than half of the screen making them near impossible to maneuver without getting hit.

At this point you may be thinking, “But why not just use your dash to avoid damage?” While, as mentioned above, dashing does give you invincibility frames, it requires you to press the D-pad in the desired direction twice. This is also paired with an animation of Astro Boy doing a flip before he dashes. An animation in which you can still get hit…if the system even detects that you’ve done it. Sometimes the system my not detect that you’ve done your input, or maybe you get too anxious and mash the button in hopes of getting out of a sticky situation. A situation in which you’ll do multiple flips and be able to get hurt. A costly mistake especially if you’re fighting bosses or larger enemies which could cause knock back…tremendously so. The knock back is a speedrunner’s worst nightmare and it kills the flow of the game. It may sound manageable and insignificant when I say your knock back will last three to four seconds, but with how fast some of these fights are it feels like an eternity. I think the combat could have been greatly improved if there was a dedicated button on the system or controller for dashing.

Despite all of it’s flaws, this is a remarkable game on the GameBoy Advance. It outshines the overwhelming majority of the competition. I think this is a game I could recommend to a lot of people interested in trying out games from this generation.

What a letdown of a game.

Tonally the game is somber and horrific. I was expecting something a bit more lighthearted (for some reason), but I was pleasantly surprised by how well the atmosphere was handled. The resorts and the Downtown district painted a picture of livelihood before the zombies came. Cars and food carts sprawled out everywhere in the Downtown district while luggage, beer bottles, and beach accessories littered the resort area. The music was tense, the environments were tense, some of those fights were really tense, like dodging Rams in a tight hallway, fighting Punks in a green mist, fighting off a horde of zombies on fire really did wonders for the game.

The game fighting and weapon mechanics were okay as well. Not the best, but serviceable. Melee weapons had durability, but it never felt unmanageable. Stomping enemies heads in and dismantling zombies was pretty fun. The gun ammunition was a tidbit scarce, so you had to reserve ammunition for certain situations. I hint it made for more tense gun battles. You could modify your weapons to give them different attributes and shake up gameplay a bit. You could have melee weapons shock your enemies or give bleed damage to help reduce the wear-and-tear to your durability. The guns, however, could have had more impact or power. The sound the guns made when they were fired was almost negligible. They could generally takedown bigger zombies faster than your melee options and they were much more useful for enemies with guns, but they were never as satisfying to use. Unfortunately, this is not where the problems end. To make matters worse, these are not enough to excuse the game’s problems with everything else. For example, its repetitiveness.

I think I can excuse some of the repetitive things in the game. Overused assets like trash cans, litter, charred bodies and broken down cars are to be expected. No video game is going to have no reused assets. Cutting corners is also prevalent in this game. Interiors of houses looking the same, similar voice actors used all across the board. However, there’s an uglier side to the repetitiveness, and that’s in its missions.

The game’s missions were bloated and, again, repetitive. A big chunk of Act IV is running errands for a man who you will never see again and gives no indication of having any use. You essentially meet him and start doing things for him. Clear out this place, clear out that place. Bye! Most of the story missions feel like this as well. They feel like filler, like the story wouldn’t change a bit if these missions didn’t exist. There is a story mission in Act II in which you must get food for the people in the church. In order to do this, you must go across town, go through the sewers and get to the police station. Fine. You run the gauntlet, you get your supplies and you return to the church. But, uh oh! It seems as if someone from your group got kidnapped and taken to the police station. I think you know where this is going. You are then told to go back to the police station. But wait! The station is still closed off, so you have to go across town and through the sewers all over again. Not fine. I literally just did that.

The story and the writing are not interesting enough to give this game any meaningful credit. The beginning was great when you meet people in a pool of their family’s blood because he killed them before they could kill him. Then there is a man who wants you to take his wife to safety because he’s been bitten and he’s afraid of hurting her. Then there’s the woman who goes back to her father to ultimately end his misery. And then there’s the 28 year-old who is totally inconsolable because she doesn’t have her teddy bear. The story itself isn’t great. You’re on an island, shit hits the fan, you’re contacted by a man who claims to have a way off the island. You do all you can to try to find this man by helping other people who claim they can help you. It’s not the worst thing ever, but it really wasn’t interesting. And the more you think about it the less sense certain things make. Things like “How long has this catastrophe been going on?” You have only been experiencing this for about a day or two, but the tribesmen worship the infected and have called them their warriors for a long time? This island is a popular tourist attraction rife with celebrities and luxuries, at no point before hand has anybody ever seen this?

Speaking of questionable trash in this game, the NPCs and A.I. weren’t anything to call mom about. NPCs are generally never given any time to have any impact on your overall perception of their outcomes…if you even see said outcomes. NPCs are generally just boring or static characters there only to give you errands. NPCs, despite having combat and survival experience, seldom lift a finger to help on escort missions.

Overall, if you want a generic zombie stomper then you could give it a try, but I think I would have to be in a very generous mood to call the game good. And honestly, it has turned me off from trying the other games in the series any time soon. It’s just a terribly, painfully okay game.