Retro Arcade Adventure Remade
April 11, 2013 1 Comment
It’s been a little over a year since I reviewed Retro Arcade Adventure, a hack-and-slasher that was sort of like Smash TV for the dark ages. I didn’t really like the game. It was short, repetitive, and boring. You could see potential in the developer, but the experience was tedious. So I was skeptical when I saw that they had decided to remake the title instead of patching the original. Ballsy for sure, since the first wasn’t very good. It would be like burning a steak and trying to correct it by throwing it back on the grill for ten minutes.
Right away, I noticed the game was somewhat improved. Enemies still come out you in boring, mindless waves, but they hack up pretty good. Levels felt shorter, power-ups more plentiful, and boss battles were fun if unspectacular.
And then I encountered this fucking thing.
It could very well be the most boring boss I’ve taken on in an indie game. It very much reminded me of the final boss in Sonic 4. Too spongy, takes too long to open itself up to attack, and made me question whether or not I had died in a horrific traffic accident and had gone to gaming hell. The first time I fought it, I was low on health (I seemed to be taking unaccountable damage in the stage leading up to it), but it took me a full ten minutes to slip up. The second time around, after over 15 minutes hitting presumably the weak spot on the boss, it still wasn’t dead. I was though. I paused the game, casually got up, turned the power off, and decided to go watch some TV. I think it was a documentary on tape worms. Vastly more entertaining than that boss was.
In short, this needs to be fixed. And it will be. The developer assured me of it, under penalty of torture by honey and fire ants. Until then, you can spend your time with the two minigames included. I just realized I never actually played them. Let me give them a shot.
(15 minutes later)
Oh dear God, what horrible shit. I’m not waiting. Break out the honey and fire ants. This developer needs a good torturing.
Retro Arcade Adventure Remade was developed by SIACTRO
80 Microsoft Points liked Smash TV years ago but don’t think it’s possible to be good in this day and age so prove me wrong indie developers in the making of this review.
Indie Gamer Chick 
Couldn’t agree more about this boss. What makes him worse is that he looks threatening and cool enough to make for a memorable fight; but he definitely overstays his welcome… about 5 times over. I somehow managed to have the patience to kill this thing; but I doubt I’d ever endure it all over again.
I have this massive pet peeve for bosses that look like you should be able to hit but can’t for some completely arbitrary reason. That always rubs me the wrong way, and in an unnecessarily drawn-out battle, it just becomes torturous. The “shoot the core” method, where the player must wait for the boss to allow access to a singular weak-point, is well and fine and time-tested and all that; but you have to be *somewhat* sensible and logical about implementing it.
The game itself was mostly really cool, I thought, though. The fast action and those ridiculous supersized character powerups give it a certain kind of attention-grabbing, arcade pizazz that many “retro” games now forget to even bother attempting. Some of the backgrounds are really, really sloppy looking, though and can outright get in the way, especially on the stage with falling rain. That’s the biggest problem I have with the game next to the giant menacing skeleton bastard that never, EVER dies.