Dusty Revenge is the story of Dusty, a rabbit whose only loved one was murdered in a house fire. As expected from the title, Dusty decided to go out and get revenge on those who killed his girlfriend. Heading off into the nearest town, the player finds Dusty immediately being attacked by rats, bulls, and other animals all seeking to kill him off. Dusty, at his disposal, has light attacks in the forms of kicks and punches, strong attacks in the form of a huge scythe, and ranged attacks in the form of dual pistols and a shotgun.

From the start, I felt the combat held potential. The number of possible attack combinations was great and varied, the different enemy types made fighting a challenge and forced you to think, and the game even featured a progression system where you could level up to unlock new combinations for killing off your enemies. However, I felt that the actual execution of the combat was lacking. Controls, at times, were unresponsive, the dodging and blocking mechanics seemed useless, and I often felt like it wasn’t my fault when I couldn’t get out of an enemy deathtrap. For the type of game it was intending to be, the combat felt too slow.

As you progress through the game, you continuously move to the right, as in most sidescrollers, and platform across obstacles. The game allows you to double jump and, on holding down the jump key, use Dusty’s ears as a parachute to glide a decent distance for those long jumps.

The art direction in the game, while visually appealing, added another problem. The level art for all of the platforms and obstacles often felt misleading. I found that I often missed a platform or couldn’t climb up onto another box because their size didn’t adequately match their hit zones. While this didn’t ruin the game for me, it did make progression a bit more annoying.

During the first couple of chapters, Dusty winds up teaming up with two different characters. Rondel, a huge bear packing heavy artillery, can help Dusty with enemies and obstacles by firing rockets into combat and at anything blocking Dusty’s path. McCoy, a dog with a sniper rifle, helps Dusty pick off enemy snipers out of his reach and finish off the enemies he beats into submission. The two characters add an interesting mechanic to the game of calling in allies mid-combat to progress. This ability adds a level of gameplay onto the main combat system which gives a welcome break from the monotony of just beating up foes repeatedly. This was one mechanic I feel they pulled off well.

What annoyed me the most in the game were the story and the characters. I felt nothing for any of the characters. I felt no sympathy, no love, and certainly didn’t feel that I knew them enough to care if they failed or succeeded. Dusty’s voice acting in all of the cutscenes felt dry and emotionless. I didn’t feel his anger, I didn’t feel his lust for revenge. All I felt was a hollow shell of a character that could have been so much more, and his two companions that I knew even less about, act as vessels for me to progress through the game.

Overall, the game has potential and looks great, but it could have been so much more. My experience with the game felt grating, and I often put the game aside for great deals of time. I don’t recommend it.

Overall Rating: ★★☆☆☆ 

What does this score mean?

This game was reviewed using a copy provided by the developer for that purpose. It was played on a Windows PC.

© 2013, The Indie Mine. All rights reserved.

Megabyte Punch, a Windows-based (and Mac) computer game by Reptile, did an incredible job of bringing that memory back, and reminding me why I loved the idea of these robots smashing each other into mechanized bits.

You play the game as one of a race of sentient digital creatures called Megacs. The Heartcore, your creator in the game, immediately addresses you at the start of the game. Your goal: protect the village of Ventu from “two external forces” that seek to harness the power of the Heartcore, which your village relies upon to survive.

After you learn all this, you are thrust into the game’s tutorial level and immediately you can notice the unique and colorful graphics style of the game. The whole game feels upbeat; it just makes you feel happy and cheerful throughout. That paired with the fast-paced electronically-composed game soundtrack solidifies a feeling of excitement and fun.

The tutorial level is short and sweet; it explains the mechanics of how to navigate, fight, and use special skills gained by various parts you can attach to yourself. Nothing felt overly complicated, and the control scheme was easy to grasp. For the game, I definitely recommend a console controller if you have one available. I played through with a Xbox 360 controller.

Combat in the game will feel very familiar to those of you who have played any of the Super Smash Bros. games. Players can launch punches and kicks to the left, right, upwards, and downwards, as well as in the air. While these basic attacks are good for generating damage on enemies up close, there are numerous additional parts you can find scattered in yellow crates and ripped from enemies that offer more options. Early on, for example, I found a rather powerful sniper rifle to blast away damage at my foes before finishing them off with a power punch.

Damage in the game is not based on a health system. Instead, it generates similar to the percent damage in Super Smash Bros. and a power strike will send them flying once an enemy has accumulated enough damage. Enemies that are launched hard enough will ram into walls, ceilings, and floors to explode quite gloriously. Nothing in the game felt more satisfying than blasting your enemies at what felt like a million miles an hour to watch them explode and drop your prize.

Upon death, enemies will drop either parts or, more commonly, round floating bits. Bits are effectively the currency system in the game, but serve a dual purpose. Every 64 bits you earn will grant you another life on top of the default 3 you start with.

Exploration in the game felt very rewarding. I felt like I should always avoid stepping through the gate to the next level and instead, backtrack and go down that extra pathway I hadn’t touched before. This resulted in me acquiring tons of bits and parts to build a much better bot.

Boss battles in the game were great. Enemies faced during boss fights all had multiple lives, similar to your own, and were more hostile in their attacks. Boss fights also took place on floating stages, like in Smash Bros., where the ultimate goal was to either launch the boss off the stage so that he couldn’t get back on in time, or high enough in the air to hit the ceiling.

The variety of parts I found during the game was huge. After two levels of the game, I had only filled about 2 1/2 pages out of a total of 15 pages of possible parts I could have acquired. Though there are always a couple different parts that carry the same perks, the effects stack so long as they’re passive upgrades. Having multiple parts that raise your speed and jump height, for instance, would increase it even further.

While the game is very fun, there are some nitpicks I found in playing through. While the controls are mostly solid, some of the binds are annoying in certain situations. The button to attack is also the same button to talk to an NPC in the town, and the game defaults to talking instead of punching things. This made it annoying to destroy all of the boxes in a certain house without talking to the ghosts that were floating about everywhere, getting in my way.

Another issue with the controls was ultimately the wall jumping mechanic. The wall jump mechanic only requires you to press the movement key (or joystick) away from any wall you were next to in order to jump away from it. While the ability to wall jump is useful for navigating levels and reaching those annoying spots, the simplicity of the control made it so that I was often jumping off walls when I didn’t want to. A lot of the pathways are narrow, so wall jumping will often happen even when you’re trying to go down.

On the Xbox controller, special attacks are bound to the B button combined with a directional movement button. This system is simple to navigate and learn, but sometimes doesn’t work with specific weapons being bound to specific spots. The sniper rifle I found was ultimately annoying to use at times when bound to B+Down, as I often found myself aiming in the complete opposite direction of my intended target as I fired it.

Lastly, it felt like acquiring levels was a bit too easy. Often times I would only die once or twice max in a single level, yet receive enough bits throughout that same level to gain four or five lives. This made the end-level boss fights feel much less challenging, as I didn’t fear that I would lose at all.

While all of these were annoying as I played, they didn’t make the entire experience unenjoyable. They are small issues – errors that could be fixed by simply adjusting some controls or changing how many bits you need to gain another life. They don’t stop the game from being fun, and I still highly recommend you give Megabyte Punch a shot. The game also includes up to four-player co-op and a versus mode to play with your friends.

Overall Rating: ★★★★☆ 

What does this score mean?

This game was reviewed using a copy provided by the developer for that purpose. It was played on a Windows PC.

© 2013, The Indie Mine. All rights reserved.