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Robot Ninja Throwbacks: Talking About Cyber Shadow

ShakeWell

ShakeWell

Slam Master
(he, etc.)
The Yacht Club-published ninja-'em-up finally got a release date. Looks PRETTY GOOD, and if we get JoyMasher's next effort, Moonrider, this year, our cups will truly runneth over with robot ninjas.

 
Sarge

Sarge

hardcore retro gamin'
Looks pretty great. Definitely right up my alley. Moonrider looks slick, too. JoyMasher has come a long way, so I can't wait to see how it turns out.
 
Kishi

Kishi

Little Waves
(They/Them)
Staff member
Moderator
The combinations of colors in every shot look deeply wrong to me, but I don't really understand why. Just troubling to look at.
 
MCBanjoMike

MCBanjoMike

Sudden chomper
(He/him)
Truly, a new era of Ninja Guidin' is upon us.
Kishi said:
The combinations of colors in every shot look deeply wrong to me, but I don't really understand why. Just troubling to look at.
Click to expand...
I think it's doing the Blaster Master Zero thing, where the color palette is sorta kinda limited but still a lot wider than you'd see in an actual 8-bit game, without having quite the depth you'd find in a 16-bit one. I think Yacht Club themselves and Inti Creates do a better job of putting together plausible retro color palettes.
 
Sarge

Sarge

hardcore retro gamin'
Octopus Prime said:
I’ve often likened that kind of colour palate to the TG-16
Click to expand...
That's a really good comparison point.

I'd also note that the SMS has quite the garish color palette as well. But I think this shows more colors overall, so the TG-16 is more apt, especially given that system's substantial color capabilities. (It actually can display more colors simultaneously than the SNES, 482 vs. 256, although it draws from a smaller pool, 512 vs. 32,768.)
 
4-So

4-So

Spicy
Anyone else playing this? I was primed to pick it up on PS4 but saw it was already on Xbox Game Pass.

I'm slightly past where you get the third power-up and enjoying it so far, although it can be NES-hard at times. That's made a bit more palatable since there is no lives system; you just respawn at the last checkpoint, which can be further upgraded to allow health refills, spirit refills, and some temporary weapon upgrades. Still, the game doesn't pull many punches and it took me longer than I'd like to admit to figure out the pattern on the second boss.

Amazing soundtrack. I don't usually bother with game OSTs but I'm hoping they release one so I can pick it up.
 
Troa11

Troa11

Given the immensity of my backlog, I do not usually purchase new games at full price. But Yacht Club gets a pass. I forgot this was out today, so thanks for bringing it up, 4-So. I'll be diving into it as soon as I finish my current game (today).
 
Sarge

Sarge

hardcore retro gamin'
I'll be grabbing it pretty soon. I know there are "no plans" for a physical version, but I have to think someone may pick it up for that, which makes me think I should wait for just a bit. Regardless, it looks great.
 
Mightyblue

Mightyblue

aggro table, shmaggro table
(He/Him/His)
Mightyblue said:
Yeah, gave it a shot and I'm probably gonna refund it. I was never a fan of the bullshit the Ninja Gaidens got up to in later levels and this entire game is built around it with a fundamentally limited core moveset that I can only expand by suffering through multi-phase boss fights with shit tells because it's all relative distance based. The "build-a-parallel-set-of-junk-towers while dodging lasers" bit at the end of the second level was pretty much my last straw for annoying time wasters and then having to fight a multi-phase boss after that with just jump/slash/shuriken was it.

Where's my crouch so I can attack the little mini-birds that love to dodge underneath my swings unless I position myself just so, where's my wall jump, etc etc. And like, yeah, I get it, these are probably later stage upgrades, and you can bum rush the second boss within a few cycles and its final form is a joke, but this is all aggressively annoying and passive aggressive.
Click to expand...
tl;dr; not for me, visually pretty and the music's p. good, but I'm too old and jaded to suffer through more NES Ninja Gaiden with a limited initial moveset.
 
Sarge

Sarge

hardcore retro gamin'
Octopus Prime said:
Game feels a lot more like the NES Batman’s than Ninja Gaiden so far.

This is lofty praise
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I was going to say, I keep seeing comparisons to Ninja Gaiden, but it reminds me more of Natsume's NES output from the trailers I've seen, which also happens to share a lot of similarities with said Batman game.

EDIT: @madhair60, just read your review. Great job! And also, thanks for making the Shadow of the Ninja comparison - happy to know I'm not completely off base in my above thoughts!

(You're wrong about The Messenger, though. ;) )
 
ShakeWell

ShakeWell

Slam Master
(he, etc.)
I bought it this morning on Switch, but have been working all day, so I didn't play it yet. But I will.
 
Troa11

Troa11

Got in about an hour or so before a late dinner here and so far it is exactly what I wanted. I would say it's an amalgam of what has been discussed so far, but the most important mechanic to me (which I expected from YCG), is that it is FAIR. Everything is doable so far without the impossible BS that defines NES Ninja Garden.
 
Peklo

Peklo

Oh! Create!
(they/them, she/her)
The attributions to Yacht Club Games re: any individual merits of this game seem a little beside the point when they're operating as a publisher to Mechanical Head Studios, a development house consisting primarily of one person (and the game's primary external composer). I'm sure they were in contact with the developer and assisted where relevant, but I think their duties were mostly about just getting the game out and on multiple platforms.

This looks in theory like something I'd enjoy but I don't think I want to engage with something that uncritically relives both the ninjasploitation genre as well as the entrenched cultural machismo and sexism attached to those concepts and derived media. It's always a huge consideration with stuff that's so enamored with the past: what do they keep from the influences, and what do they get rid of?
 
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4-So

4-So

Spicy
Played another two hours or so tonight and I'm getting vague Mega Man X vibes from some of it, especially after you find the wall slide/jump and sprint. There's also some boss designs that would not be out of place in a MMX game.
 
madhair60

madhair60

Video games
Peklo said:
The attributions to Yacht Club Games re: any individual merits of this game seem a little beside the point when they're operating as a publisher to Mechanical Head Studios, a development house consisting primarily of one person (and the game's primary external composer). I'm sure they were in contact with the developer and assisted where relevant, but I think their duties were mostly about just getting the game out and on multiple platforms.
Click to expand...

I think it's interesting seeing which Shovel Knight-isms made it into this game. I'd be surprised if they were there before Yacht Club's intervention.
 
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Troa11

Troa11

Still plugging along today. I think it was section 7 that finally started kicking my butt a bit and had an area that took more than 2 or 3 tries. Right after
you get all your abilities upgraded.
 
4-So

4-So

Spicy
Got to chapter 10 tonight and the Mega Man DNA keeps showing up, so much so that I think I reasonable argument could be made that the game is more Mega Man than Ninja Gaiden. Also came across a few other homages in the level design and enemies - Metroid, Super Metroid, and Super Mario Bros. The game continues to impress and continues to frustrate. The latter part is mostly my own fault; every time I reach a new checkpoint, I try to figure out the optimal "speed" routing in the next section, which necessarily means a lot of trial and error. But, man, once you figure it out and you're zipping around, using your entire skillset, Cyber Shadow feels pretty incredible.
 
Troa11

Troa11

That was pretty much when I started slowing down a bit, was because I needed to figure out my new skillset. And I wasn't smart enough to open the pause menu to read what each new ability was.
 
Troa11

Troa11

And beaten! That was fun. Going to go back and scour levels for what I missed and maybe restart and try some of the challenge feats.
 
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