Just beat the Picnic Panic DLC so I’ve now played all of it.
The Messenger is a great game — a really good platformer with top notch boss fights and funny writing.
It succeeds in the same places Shovel Knight does — killer music, authentic look, great difficulty, and characters you get attached to. Unfortunately, it also falters in the same place Shovel Knight did (post SK DLC): there is too much of it.
The Messenger starts out as a linear, left to right action platformer a bit like Ninja Gaiden. When it is doing this, it is at its strongest. After the halfway mark when it adds on Metroid-style elements, it damn near falls apart. The game is great, but the pacing takes a nosedive and an excellent retro action game is chased with a below average Metroidvania. It pushes the mechanics of the game to their breaking point, and while there are many good things to find, it’s a 10 hour game that should have been 7.
It’s hard to complain too much because the foundation is rock solid, and for $20 (I paid $3 on a key site and you can probably get it for $8 on a sale), it’s an extremely generous package of high quality content. With that pretty good DLC, I spent 13 hours on this.
I recommend The Messenger despite its flaws. Even when it annoys you, it does something cute or clever and makes you go “ahhh this game is all right.”
The Messenger is a great game — a really good platformer with top notch boss fights and funny writing.
It succeeds in the same places Shovel Knight does — killer music, authentic look, great difficulty, and characters you get attached to. Unfortunately, it also falters in the same place Shovel Knight did (post SK DLC): there is too much of it.
The Messenger starts out as a linear, left to right action platformer a bit like Ninja Gaiden. When it is doing this, it is at its strongest. After the halfway mark when it adds on Metroid-style elements, it damn near falls apart. The game is great, but the pacing takes a nosedive and an excellent retro action game is chased with a below average Metroidvania. It pushes the mechanics of the game to their breaking point, and while there are many good things to find, it’s a 10 hour game that should have been 7.
It’s hard to complain too much because the foundation is rock solid, and for $20 (I paid $3 on a key site and you can probably get it for $8 on a sale), it’s an extremely generous package of high quality content. With that pretty good DLC, I spent 13 hours on this.
I recommend The Messenger despite its flaws. Even when it annoys you, it does something cute or clever and makes you go “ahhh this game is all right.”