Monday, May 11, 2020

Game EXP: High Noon Revolver (NS)



kerPOW!
High Noon Revolver is a 2D sidescrolling auto-scrolling shooter from Mike Studios where you move through three possible lanes taking out wave-after-wave of varying types of enemies.  The game is also hard as balls.  And I am not talking Dark Souls or even Mega Man (the original) hard, I am talking randomized enemies sometimes popping up out off-screen to take you out while hoping that the randomized amount of gold you collect will be enough to purchase at least one randomized buff that might help you survive long enough to make it to the level boss and defeat them before you are killed.  This game is hard if that did not come across in the previous two sentences, but it is also quite a lot of fun if you can get through all of the frustrations.  But like any game, there are plenty of Pros and Cons here.

The first Pro is the title song, "High Noon" (composed by Vincent Rubinetti)  Now, if this song does not pull you into this game, then there is possibly very little hope for you.  But let us not make exclusions because taste in music is subjective.  For me though, "High Noon" encapsulates the fun that I have playing when things are going in my favor.  If only the entire game was as awesome as this song then we would be working with an arcade-style hit on our hands.

The second thing I enjoyed about the game was the art style and character design.  It reminded me a bit of the gunplay of Super Crate Box (minus the weapons changing every 30 seconds) and looks to be an homage of sorts to Psycho Soldier by SNK and Son Son  by Capcom in that they are all auto-side-scrolling shooters with three or more lanes where enemies are constantly trying to kill you.  The cartoonish look of the game, along with the varying cast of main characters, from your bland cowboy type, to a chicken and a futuristic laser-toting traveler, are all a  nod to the general silliness of the game.

"Survive this, asshole!" ~ The Game.
In some ways, HNR feels like an old school arcade game ported to the NES back in the mid-1980s, and this is where the Cons happen to start. Back when games were difficult for the sake of being difficult, otherwise, you could run through a $50 game in less than an hour (looking at you Castlevania). Regardless of the starting character you choose, you only have a single life (take that Cranky Kong!).  And once you die, and you will die, you have to start over from Stage 1.  No restarting from the stage where you died, but you have to go back and start over from the very beginning.  Imagine if in Ghosts 'n Goblins you had to start over from Level 1 after every time you died.  Especially in the first handful of run-throughs, your primary focus is to score as many points as possible so that you can unlock more and better characters than Wesley.  I think that is how it works anyway, as I was able to unlock Annie before I beat the first boss Golden Scarf, and it might have just been a coincidence that I unlocked my fourth character Zero after beating that boss for the first time.

I Only Unlocked These Four & It Is Probably Obvious 
Who I Went With for the Majority of the Time I Played.
When you start HNR, you select from one of two playable characters (I have read that in the PC version, that you only start off with Wesley?), each with a different weapon loadout and stats.  There is Wesley who has not great stats (4 Health, 1 Weapon Damage, 3 Movement) and starts with a single-shot pistol that does the minimalist amount of damage possible, and  Eagle who has 3 Health, 3 Weapon Damage, and 3 Movement starts with a three projectile-firing shotgun.  Now for me, if I can fire three bullets at once that will have a good chance of hitting enemies on levels one, two, AND three, then you can bet your bangtail that I am going to pick the shotgun toating Chicken!  Although in this game, I would prioritize weapon health > weapon damage > movement speed,  if only because most enemies take one hit to kill, even with Zero's 2 Damage laser gun.  Throughout my gameplay, I was able to unlock two additional characters after the starting two, Annie and Zero, with Annie being my favorite character to play primarily because she started with 6 Health, 5 Weapon Damage, and 3 Movement with the caveat being that her rifle had a slow rate of fire.

So there you are playing HNR, and you manage to make it to the final boss on your 10th attempt, and you eke out a victory with a single heart remaining.  Great job, you've made it to the second level!  The stage 2 design is similar in that you have three lanes to choose from, jumping and shooting enemies, but the layout is a little different to throw you off your guard, which is a good thing.  But because some level design elements are new and you spent the last hour getting used to Stage 1, you will probably end up dying.  No, you have not unlocked the second stage.  No, you cannot start the second stage any time you want now.  When you continue you do not have the option to start over at the beginning of Stage 2.  With your one life gone, you start back at the beginning of Stage 1.  This, for me at least, is my biggest gripe with High Noon Revolver.  Looking at the soundtrack, there are a total of seven levels and presently, I have only made it to the boss of Stage 2 twice after playing between one and five hours and with the first stage taking about five minutes to complete, that is a lot of time spent on the first level, only reaching the Second Stage boss Toad King once, and then getting discouraged after dying and returning back to Golden Scarf and the First Stage.  I would not look forward to spending another two-plus hours just to make it to Stage 3 consistently.

Explosive Crates, or Move Faster, Because I Cannot Afford the
30 Gold Coin One.
But consistency is not what HNR is about as mentioned above.  The enemies in each stage are themselves consistent, but how and when they show up is random.  The amount of gold you earn from killing enemies and from boxes is random.  The available items to purchase after mini-boss battles (the skulls on the stage tracker at the bottom) is random.  When you reach a new stage, there might be some crossover enemies, but there will also be a new host of enemies for you to learn the best tactics on how to beat them and make it through safely.  Maybe.  Because of how random the game can be, it can be difficult to get god.  And when a core mechanic of your game is to replay the first stage after you die, getting gud requires a lot of playtime, something that players may feel is not worth their time.

At Least I Got A New High Score?
High Noon Revolver on the Switch can fun, but this fun factor is directly tied to your longevity in playing.  If you die early on because you end up being swamped with enemies and a screen full of enemy fire after using up your potion-bomb-things (which destroy enemy fire), then the game can cease to be fun.  When you have a character like Annie who starts off with a  lot of health and deals a lot of damage, the game became a lot more fun, but still frustrating when you die either at the first encounter with Golden Scarf in Stage 1 or right before you reach The Toad King in Stage 2.  Maybe the fun factor increases if you are playing multiplayer?  Maybe the mechanics are a little different in two-player mode?  What gets aggravating though is playing the same stage over and over and feeling like your gameplay is not improving with each attempt.  An easy fix would be to allow the player to continue from the start of the stage they died, but if you start the game over with a new character, you would start over from Stage 1.  Just a thought?

Would I recommend this game as a whole?  I don't know.  I might recommend it to a person with very specific tastes in games, but I would not give it a resounding "Stage Select Start Recommended!" banner (not that we have one).  Honestly though, for me, the best thing to come out of this game was the music, which we will get to more on Wednesday for our MIDI Week Single, then on Friday for an interview with composer Vincent Rubinetti.  So please come back throughout the week for more about this frustratingly kinda-fun game.



~JWfW/JDub/Cooking Crack/Jaconian
It Tells Me To Strive On


P.S.
Here is a quick 30 clip of the general action in the game, death included.




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