{"id":61,"date":"2021-01-31T19:13:19","date_gmt":"2021-01-31T19:13:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.gatecitygaming.com\/?p=61"},"modified":"2021-01-31T19:13:19","modified_gmt":"2021-01-31T19:13:19","slug":"savior-or-false-shephard-i-hate-running-backward","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.gatecitygaming.com\/index.php\/2021\/01\/31\/savior-or-false-shephard-i-hate-running-backward\/","title":{"rendered":"Savior or False Shephard: I Hate Running Backward"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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This article originally ran under a different banner\/website in July of 2018 and is now being here re-uploaded for purposes of convenience and consolidation. Please enjoy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was hesitant to return to doomsaying.\u00a0 I have experienced harrowing dreams in the recent nights that rendered me sleepless.\u00a0 The dream was so lifelike; I, a vigilante, had just caught the dangerous maniac plaguing my city.\u00a0 With him firmly tied to a lamppost, pulled the mask off his face to reveal a man with \u201cDifficult Roguelites” tattooed to his forehead.\u00a0 I stumbled backwards gasping to shout.\u00a0 The figure started to cackle through his twisted smile.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI think you and I are destined to do this forever,\u201d\u00a0 he laughed.\u00a0 \u201cDestined to repeat level one over and over.\u00a0 Destined to run levels not crafted by a human.\u00a0 Destined to run into a cliff face difficulty curve.\u00a0 Finally, destined to be unable to reach the end of your games.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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At that point, I wake up to breathing heavily and laying in a\u00a0 pool of my own sweat.\u00a0 Returning as the Doomsayer meant the nonsense the villain was spewing, would come true.\u00a0 I have to dance with the devil known as roguelites.\u00a0 Surely, there must be roguelite that I can enjoy and hail it from the rooftops.\u00a0 Well, there was one at PAX East, I had a lot of fun with.\u00a0 It was even published by Devolver Digital, the court jesters of E3.\u00a0 I always admired Devolver Digital as one of the few publishers who seems to understand the definition of fun.\u00a0 The game is I Hate Running Backwards:<\/em> an upside down Contra<\/em>-like shooter where enemies run up from the bottom of the screen and you shoot at them from the top.\u00a0 With a Minecraft<\/em>-like art style with characters from previous Devolver Digital titles such as Serious Sam<\/em>, Shadow Warrior<\/em>, Hotline Miami, Enter the Gungeon, Nuclear Throne, <\/em>and Broforce<\/em>, this seemed like a winning formula.\u00a0 Surely, this would be a good reintroduction to our beloved Doomsayer:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00a0LADIES AND GENTLEMEN!!!\u00a0 I HAVE RETURN TO RECALL MY ADVENTURE WITH I HATE RUNNING BACKWARDS<\/em>.\u00a0 Eager to play a game of Devolver Digital quality, I loaded up I Hate Running Backwards<\/em>, and was greeted with the option of choosing various characters, each with their own unique stats and abilities.\u00a0 Initially, my choices included the well rounded Serious Sam, the agile Dancing Denzell, and the slow minigun wielding Chux.\u00a0 Always preferring jacks of all trades characters, I chose Serious Sam as my champion and immediately jumped in.\u00a0 After a brief tutorial, I was firing my gun as I backpedaled through a landscape of Egyptian pyramids.\u00a0 I was finding the gameplay solid as I ripped pixelated spiders apart.\u00a0 While enemies are trying to chase you down, you can use a spin move to either kill close up, reflect projectiles, or break the environment.\u00a0 Breaking the environment around you not only removes obstacles, but also grants experience you can use to buy combat upgrades known as perks.\u00a0 I was able to achieve a good balance of combat and gaining experience by breaking the environment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then I reached him\u2026 The Scorpion King.\u00a0 A giant red scorpion robot with mini guns mounted on the side and a mountainous stinger that fires a poison wave.\u00a0 He fires the mini guns in rapid succession as he strafed from side to side, forcing you to carefully maneuver in front of him or risk instantly losing a health point.\u00a0 Just when you think you got the movement down, he fires the poison wave requiring lightning reflexes to dodge.\u00a0 He made swift work of me.\u00a0 Not expecting to beat him on my first try, I ventured to keep at it.\u00a0 As I performed numerous flawless runs through the level, only to easily fall to the Scorpion King, I started to hear my nemesis from my dream laughing:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou have encountered the difficulty curve resembling a cliff face.\u00a0 You’re doomed to run the first level over and over again.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dreading I would never get this voice out of my head, I decided to use the game\u2019s many difficulty settings to enable a mode that gave me an extra life: Baby Mode.\u00a0 Something I was not too thrilled to enable about since if you are going to mock me for not having the time to get ridiculously good at your game, I will probably not have the desire to put in that time.\u00a0 Nonetheless, I pressed on and was able to survive the Scorpion King thanks to that extra health point.\u00a0 I was able to get past the second level with no difficulty, not even from the boss.\u00a0 The third level did give me trouble with a monsterous bull occasionally blazing across the screen that would one shot good old Serious Sam.\u00a0 While I was trying to get to the fourth level, I had the epiphany that despite the fast gameplay, all the roguelite elements slowed the game down.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When you level up, the game pauses, mid combat, to allow you to pick a perk from the random assortment of perks you have collected from your various runs.\u00a0 While I do appreciate being able to pick a perk that fits our play style, I almost rather get one at random.\u00a0 I find pausing mid combat to be a real pace killer.\u00a0 When you die, the game has to tally up all the points you have gained from minion kills, environment destroyed, and boss kills, and the game insists on calculating it slowly.\u00a0 Then when I try to start up a new run, I must start out at the difficulty setting screen, confirming I want the settings to stay the same as the last run.\u00a0 For a game desiring to be a \u201cpunishing roguelite,\u201d all this kills the pace and my desire to improve.\u00a0 All these roguelite mechanics do nothing but create a start and stop motion, and much like riding with someone who drives like that, I just want to get out of the car.\u00a0 If you want to have a monstrous difficulty, take the Cuphead<\/em> method and allow me to immediately jump back into the fight.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Maybe, much like Just Shapes and Beats<\/em>, this game is meant for co-op.\u00a0 The booth at PAX East that was showing off I Hate Running Backwards<\/em> was set up for two players.\u00a0 I recruited a local hobo in an attempt to see if a player two made the game more bearable.\u00a0 We were able to determine the only difference between solo and co-op, was your partner could respawn after thirty seconds if they died.\u00a0 We were never able to take advantage of this in the level and when we tried to use it at the most difficult moments, King Scorpion ripped us apart too quickly.\u00a0 After five runs, the hobo turned to me and asked if we could play Fortnite<\/em>.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Myself and the hobo were in agreeance, while the gameplay is solid and satisfying enough, the roguelite elements drag it down.\u00a0 The perks you get from leveling up don\u2019t have much affect especially when you have to balance shooting and breaking environments.\u00a0 The game play promotes fast pace, but the game drags it down with calculating your score. \u00a0 The levels can be varied, but with bosses gatekeeping your progress, it is hard to be encouraged to reach them.\u00a0 Maybe, someone looking for a Contra-like game mixed with more arcade frustration will find enjoyment in this game.\u00a0 For me, the game doesn\u2019t do enough to motivate me enough to press on.\u00a0 My hunt to silence the voice in my nightmare must continue on though, and I can only do it on my soapbox.\u00a0 Look out world.\u00a0 The Doomsayer is back. \u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This article originally ran under a different banner\/website in July of 2018 and is now being here re-uploaded for purposes of convenience and consolidation. Please enjoy. I was hesitant to return to doomsaying.\u00a0 I have experienced harrowing dreams in the recent nights that rendered me sleepless.\u00a0 The dream was so lifelike; I, a vigilante, had… Continue reading Savior or False Shephard: I Hate Running Backward<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":62,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-61","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-game-reviews","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gatecitygaming.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gatecitygaming.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gatecitygaming.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gatecitygaming.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gatecitygaming.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=61"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.gatecitygaming.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":64,"href":"https:\/\/www.gatecitygaming.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61\/revisions\/64"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gatecitygaming.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/62"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gatecitygaming.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=61"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gatecitygaming.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=61"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gatecitygaming.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=61"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}