Tuesday, July 8, 2014

Dr. Eggplant’s game review: Shovel Knight

Back in the 90’s shows like Captain Planet and the original Power Rangers, would have heroes combine their efforts to form something so legendary that people would remember it for years to come.  Well when it comes to the 8-bit era, if a gamer were to combine some aspects of Mega Man, Ducktales, Castlevania, Zelda II, and Super Mario 3 all into one game, you would get Shovel Knight.  The first game designed by yacht club games, Shovel Knight is an old school 2d sweeping platformer that takes the best aspects of the 8-bit Era and jumbles it all into one game.
 

The game starts off with the story of two adventurers named Shovel knight and Shield knight exploring their land trying to collect all kinds of rare and valuable treasures.  One night Shovel Knight and Shield Knight started exploring the tower of fate, once inside they found a cursed amulet that displayed its evil powers thus knocking out Shovel Knight.  Once he awoke the tower of fate had been sealed off and Shield Knight was nowhere to be found.  After losing Shield Knight, Shovel Knight falls into a depressive state and gives up on adventuring and searching for treasure.  This allowed the evil Enchantress and the order of no quarter consisting of 8 knights to reopen the tower of fate and take over the land.  Once learning about the Enchantress, Shovel Knight once again picks up his shovel and sets his sights on the tower of fate to hopefully find and rescue Shield Knight, but in order to do that he must first defeat the 8 knights of the “Order of No Quarter” before he can even reach the tower of fate.

I first got to play Shovel Knight back at PAX East in April and after playing it then, I asked the developers when exactly the game was going to be released, and regardless of what any article was saying at the time, even the developers did not have a real idea of when they would actually be released leaving me questioning whether I would even see this game in 2014.  To my excitement the game was released just a couple of months later in June and I could not wait to play the final product.  After playing through the game I can tell you that all the expectations I had for the game came true and the game gave me not just a wonderful gaming experience, but a Nostalgia factor that really brought me back to the days of playing Mega Man and Ducktales. 

The stage designs throughout the game have a strong Mega Man influence to them but with a Castlevania/Ghouls and Ghosts theme that really matches the scenery of the game.  When visiting the village and the armory in the game, it took me right back to when you would play Zelda II visiting a town before heading to the next dungeon.  Even though there were no women to invite you in their houses and “replenish” your health or magic, the town did allow the ability to upgrade your health with meal tickets and magic by spending all of the treasure you find throughout the game.  At the armory you could buy different armor upgrades from armor that would reduce your health but give you more magic, to armor that with two successful down strikes in a row would let you use a strong shovel swipe on your opponents.   Once leaving a stage or village, the world map is very reminiscent to Mario 3 as you move from place to place and also random stages will pop up as well and the icon on the screen represents whether it is a treasure stage or a stage that you will fight a bunch of enemies in.  Some of them also are just boss battles that you will go through in order to reach certain spots in the game but you get rewarded with some nice treasure.

Each stage brings its own unique challenges throughout the game which include parts of stages in almost complete darkness, to shoveling weird green goo into lava that creates a springy service for a short period of time.  Each stage does have a whole bunch of breakable walls that could lead from a secret area that treasure chests could lie in, to just an enemy popping up getting in your way.  The Boss battles for each stage are much different than any boss battle I experienced in the 8-bit days.  Each Knight has their own set of attacks, but what makes them different from 8-bit games in the past is that they do not follow a set pattern, each battle can be completely random and the bosses can do something different from the previous battle you had with them.  The last thing about the stages that really makes them amazing is the music.  Each stage has that classic hybrid of what you would hear in a Mega Man game along with something you would hear from a Castlevania or Ghosts and Goblins game as well.  The music really brings respect to the games from yesteryear and yacht club games did very well bringing that nostalgia factor of the music into this game.

I didn’t have a real problem with the game just a couple little things.  One problem was that each stage had a secret area that you would go into to receive a helpful weapon that could get you through that particular stage or future stages, but that was not the problem part, the problem part was that if you could not find the area where you would purchase the item, if you beat the stage you would be allowed to go into the village to visit the genie in the blue treasure chest (which is the same guy you would find in the stages) and purchase the item right then and there.  This takes away the challenge that old school games had with trying to collect all the items thus making the game a little more difficult and the satisfaction of finding an item after hard work to get it.  The other problem was that the game was very forgiving when you died, because instead of playing with a set amount of lives and having to work with that, you would only lose some of your treasure that if you got back to that point where you died you could get the treasure right back making the game extremely forgiving. Other than that the game is pretty much flawless.

All in all Shovel Knight is an 8-bit platformer that ranks up with some of the best platformers to ever grace the video game world.  Yacht Club games did a tremendous job for their first game and I look forward to see what other games they will bring us in the future.  This is one game that I am happy to see kickstarter help reach its goal to build the game and yacht club respond with something truly amazing.

Shovel Knight: 9.5-10
Phenomenal

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