To yummymelon
How's the view from up on your high horse? Should we all worship the god of Raider?
Game was fun and get me interested. Challenging as you said but worth some time.
Reviews for "Raider: Episode 1"
Good game, could be a lot better
First things first, I didn't like the controls. I hate having the jump and two attack buttons all controlled by my left hand. I noticed this and changed jump to "up" right away. Much better. Except when navigating options (can't use up) and climbing ladders becomes much harder. Normally not a big deal, yet the latter half of the game is like all ladders. And unfortunately you can't change the controls during the game once you find you need to tweak it. Big flaw.
I like games with challenge, though this frankly was too hard. I played it on medium mode, and yeah I know you said "don't complain if this is too hard if you haven't tried easy" but I'm not going to replay the game all the way over at this point. Yeah I should have started on easy in hindsight, but at the same time you shouldn't call "easy" a mode you want to play to practice. You should of called "easy" a normal mode recommended for just about all players playing this game for the first time, and "normal" mode "hard" mode. Yes I am nitpicking....but c'mon does the purple checkpoint really have to be so far from a boss that hard? I only continued once the whole game but after I got beat by the last boss I wasn't going to continue a 2nd time.
Does the game have to have so much spikes? Yeah I know I should be grateful spikes aren't instant death compared to say Megaman. But megaman was 95% shooting baddies and 5% spikes. This game is like 75% jumping over spikes and climbing ladders and 25% killing baddies.
Eh, I'm sure I came off as whiner from this review. Oh well, I do think this is a really good game, its just a shame because I could have enjoyed it a lot more. Not any one problem was that bad, its just that all of it combined with the up button/ladder thing it became frustrating. This is still a great game though. I'm looking forward to the sequel and will be sure to play it on easy and will be careful about changing the controls, heh.
side note: the character really looks like Megaman when climbing ladders, his "hair/horn" even creates a line down his head like Megaman's helmet. Was this done intentionally as a tribute? I thought that was pretty cool.
Pseudolonewolf responds:
Yet ANOTHER complaint about the controls... I've always found jump as UP to be really amateur and awkward, and no console game that I've ever played has had anything other than one of the 'action buttons' as jump since jumping itself isn't a simple 'movement' but a distinct 'ability'... Or that's how I see it, anyway.
The default controls are designed as they are because they work well; they just take a few moments to get used to, as is likely the case in most games (I wonder if people who complain about the controls in this complain about the controls in all other Flash games...?), and the ability to customise the controls isn't very well supported since it was mainly added to satisfy the people who blamed the 'awkward controls' for their unfamiliarity with the game... Or something. Hmm.
I'll refine it better for the future episodes though.
The modes are called 'Beginner' (not Easy), 'Intermediate' and 'Expert' because those names imply practice rather than simply difficulty. 'Easy', 'Normal' and 'Hard' clearly imply that you'd be able to finish them all in your first try, probably, but it'd be more challenging on the highest settings.
But this game's difficulty seems to be directly related to how much practice someone's had with the game, so if they've had none, they're a 'Beginner', and if they've had loads, they're an 'Expert'. 'Intermediate' is between the two, but it's not called 'Normal'.
Really though, the default selected difficulty SHOULD be 'Beginner', so perhaps I'll make it that in future so then people won't always choose the higher difficulties out of pride and then complain about the game's difficulty when they don't have enough practice to succeed...
Also, on Beginner, you have infinite lives, so you can just keep trying at the boss without much penalty if you fail. On the other difficulties though, I wanted to make lives MEAN something and to encourage carefulness, rather than 'it doesn't really matter if you die because you can just try again straight away'...
Some platformers are 100% fighting enemies with essentially no dangerous platforming elements, whereas some just don't have baddies at all and are all about skillful jumping around. I'd say that focus on one and not the other is just a matter of *difference*, rather than one being worse for not focusing on one thing enough.
This game isn't Megaman, so it should be expected to be different in many regards, one of which is the balance of enemies and platforming things like spikes.
Anyway, I probably don't sound all that grateful or something in this response because I probably generally tend to sound bitter and dismissive, but I really do appreciate reviews like this! o_O
good game
but the controls are bad
better next time...
its good...
but you can do better...
Not too shabby
A pretty good sidescroller that remindes me of the old NES days. The gold trophies were near impossible to get but anything good is worth the effort. The simple design fit well and the music is great but not annoying. Not too much I'd change.