Based on the webseries of (almost) the same name, Angry Video Game Nerd Adventures is a retro style platformer stuffed with 100s of callbacks to the show and digs at the games that it emulates itself. If you haven't seen the show then, well, if the average Lesmocon strip down of a game during a review involves linking its nipples up to a car battery then the average AVGN review involves striking it with a bolt of lightning as it descends into a car crusher. It's flat out brutal really, also he says ass a lot.
If nothing else this really is an audiovisual treat with lovingly crafted pixel art and wonderful music (which also shovels in a few little in jokes an references of its own). What's nice about the comedy in this game is it never shoves your face into it, the gags are just kind of there and you get them or you don't. A great example of this is the tutorial stage where Navi from Ocarina of Time acts as the annoying "state the obvious" information box, but the game never pauses itself for any of this dialogue, you can just ignore it entirely if you don't care. This is a relief when compared to say, Conker's Bad Fur Day, which would make every box of text in this game into its own 10 minute unskippable cut scene and end up being far more insufferable that the things its supposed to be parodying.
One nice touch is the message you get on each death is some randomly generated line of profanity about how much the game you're playing sucks by the AVGN himself. It's a somewhat clever way around the repetition issue with comedy that most games have, it's also probably a fair representation of how the average AVGN episode is actually written.
Gameplay? Yea it's alright, think Mega Man as the basic framework, but with 8 direction shooting, way more checkpoints and tons more cheap stuff. A lot of people have made a huge stuff over the difficulty in this game, and although it is fairly tough it's really nothing that bad it's just the kind of game where you might die a couple of times on each bit but basically figure it out. Veteran retro gamers, all things considered, shouldn't have too much of a problem getting to the final stage, and then getting further than that is up to your personal patience.
There is one HUGE issue with this game though that almost takes it out of the orbit of "good" entirely, and that is the difficulty. Well, not the "difficulty" that was discussed in the last paragraph, but the "difficulties". This whole thing is so irritating it deserves to be analysed in full:
- Easy Mode - Unlimited Lives, Six Hits, Unlimited Continues
This is silly because the game is pretty generous in terms of checkpoints, and half of these checkpoints don't have deadly pitfalls or instakill blocks on them. You have six hits, and there's very few checkpoints where it's even realistically possible to get hit six times before you make it to the next one, so there's nothing stopping you from just kamazeing your way through half the game. So there is no "easy mode", this is "cheat mode", it's utterly pointless to play the game like this.
- Normal Mode - 30 Lives, 3 Hits, Unlimited Continues
So in other words, how the game was supposed to be played. 3 hits and unlimited continues are reasonable enough, but 30 lives? Let me guess, Konami Code, it's a joke I get it yea yea. The Mega Man games have always had this weird issue where you have 3 lives, but if you beat a level with less than that remaining it doesn't top them up, so when you start the next level you may as well dunk yourself in the first pit 2 times and refresh yourself. You have unlimited continues, and you might waste a lot of your own time by attempting a level on one life, so why wouldn't you?
In Mega Man this was just a silly little quirk of the game design that wasted some of your time, imagine how much worse this problem is when you have THIRTY!
There were loads of occasions in this game where I beat a level using about 10-15 lives...then what's the games attitude? Either I get ballsy and attempt the next level that may be way tougher with not that many lives left, or I have to dunk myself in the first pit like 15 times?! That death screen and joke might be nice when you're casually playing the game, but when you're dying a lot in a row and you realise it's non skippable and not that fast it really starts to grind.
I know some people will take issue with this and say that I'm complaining about the game "being too hard" or something. But how is this making the game harder? The level is still the same, I can get through the levels reasonably comfortably with a few failed attempts, all having a lives system (and this one is especially bad) does is waste more of my time for failing. That doesn't make the game any more difficult, it just pads out the length by making me redo stuff I've already proved I can do and are sick of doing again. It certainly makes the game more frustrating, and it wastes more of my time, but if you think either of these things are identical to being "challenging" you need to go play some Super Meat Boy RIGHT NOW.
- Hard Mode - 15 Lives, No Continues, No Saving
Oh god, I don't even care, hard mode is for the hardcores and they like this sort of thing so more power to them. But what is this "No Saving" business? You do realise I can just pause and minimize the game right? Like is it a sign of weakness if I get a power cut while playing a video game? NO, REAL GAMERS PLAY ON AN EXERCISE BIKE AND GENERATE THEIR OWN ELECTRICITY.
So all in all, Angry Video Game Nerd Adventures is a pretty good game that fans of the show will love, even if it is slightly ruined (like a lot of indie games) by the developers refusing to acknowledge that a lot of the design choices in old Nintendo games were kind of rubbish. It walks the line better than most retro style games and it's way ahead of most comedy games, but never forget that deliberately annoying is still pretty annoying.
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