What sets Curse of the Dead Gods apart is the way in which it requires players to be greedy while also punishing them for it. It pervades every inch of this rogue-like action game from developer Passtech Games: It’s the treasure-hunting motivation for each of your runs through a series of Mesoamerican temples, a necessity in combat, and an ever-present curse that will stop an expedition cold if you can’t mitigate the corruption that you’re dealt every time you take a reward. Greed is the end-all, be-all of Curse of the Dead Gods ( Focus Home Interactive). Perhaps inevitably, the opening levels are a little rudimentary, but the game’s virtuosic brio is such that you will find yourself instantly hooked. And the piecemeal approach to your growing ninja arsenal lets the game subtly tutorialize, allowing you to hone each new skill that’s handed to you until it’s time for them all to come together as the game kicks into high gear. There are no real penalties for death, with each checkpoint allowing you to purchase health or a temporary item in preparation for the path ahead. The game is at its most thoughtful when tempering the infamous difficulty of its forerunners without diluting it. The really punishing stretches (beyond, perhaps, a really irritating second chapter) train you well enough to breeze through the parts that follow and, mercifully, checkpoints arrive much sooner than you might initially expect. The game is set in an exaggerated cyberpunk future, and each of its levels presents you with new mechanics, from enemies that send electric bolts between one another to a sky laser that targets you the moment you step out from under a roof’s cover.Ĭyber Shadow is every bit as challenging as its pedigree suggests, but the game takes care to space out its most demanding segments. But to commend the game purely in terms of retro fealty risks glossing over the considerable precision and craft that Hunziker, the sole member of Mechanical Head Studios, has put into each gorgeously pixelated gauntlet. This action platformer, then, owes a sizable debt to Ninja Gaiden, as well as to other 8-bit sidescrollers of yore. As the cyborg ninja at the center of Aarne Hunziker’s Cyber Shadow ( Yacht Club Games), your goal is to slice through robotic foes across 11 chapters, all while contending with various obstacles, such as spike-filled pits.
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