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Jakarta Post

The Messenger the perfect kind of retro

This makes it tempting for developers to rest upon retro graphic interfaces and 8- or 16-bit flourishes without actually balancing that with awesome gameplay.

Marcel Thee (The Jakarta Post)
Jakarta
Tue, December 4, 2018

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The Messenger the perfect kind of retro Retro look: The Messenger game is a side-scrolling ninja adventure with an old-school presentation. (Courtesy of Sabotage Studio./-)

E

nter The Messenger, a side-scrolling ninja adventure of which the old-school presentation is almost secondary to its addictive playability. The game takes its most obvious influence — the popular Ninja Gaiden series — and expands it in every direction.

Sure, its callback presentation harks back to the glory days of the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) and Sega Megadrive (“Genesis” in North America) in the early 90s, but instead of having its aesthetic be the focus, The Messengerinfuses its retro style into the gameplay’s challenges — evoking a playful-yet-menacing atmosphere and setting off missions that require the kind of quick thinking and reflexes the best games of those eras necessitated.

Incredibly, it is as challenging as old-school games without evoking the feeling of frustrating-unfairness of some of those titles. You won’t want to chuck your stick down, but you’ll be hard pressed not wanting to pick it up again and again.

The twists and turns in both the gameplay and story line is perhaps the most “modern” aspect of the game.

The Messenger is a smart game in its ability to not feel monotonous, considering the limitations of its retro graphics. The player relies on a cloud-stepping movement — meaning that every hit on an enemy, objects, or incoming projectiles, earns players an additional jump.

Before you know it, there are grappling hooks, a squirrel-wing-like getup and a lot of wall-climbing. Mastering these skills are key to their increasing necessity throughout the game’s progression — with boss battles in particular requiring a whole lot of hopping around to get things done and the hook crucial in navigating the increasingly brutal levels.

Soon enough, players willing to spend time practicing the skill will be hopping and leaping all over the screen, more-blazingly than Ninja Gaiden’s jump-happy titular character ever did (This is not a knock to that legendary game, by the way).

This next section pertains to a mild-spoiler related to gameplay, but it’s necessary to discuss what a key component it is to the overall game.

Meanwhile, the twists comes constantly, with a major one half-way through when the game shifts from 8- to 16-bit with its soundtrack fittingly doing the same and sounding a little more complex.

The game changes in the process, having players replay some of the early levels through a completely different light, shifting between their 8- and-16-bit existence for a constantly different perspective — discovering new areas and surprises along the way.

This shifts the game on its head, infusing smart puzzle elements to its action rhythm without losing a beat. Add to that the ability to upgrade health and skills makes The Messenger a game that is definitely deeper than its pixelated visuals.

By the game’s final leg, it even borrows the futurist or discovery element that is reminiscent of the popular Metroid series by way of (the equally popular) Castlevania series.

The basic story may not be particularly masterful, essentially presenting your ninja character as trying to ward off goblins out of his village, but it matters little to the overall experience.

There are some of those self-aware wink-wink elements that it shares with other retro-driven modern-games, but a lot of the writing is genuinely clever and funny — silliness that doesn’t overstay its welcome.

The death-goblin Quarble is one such example; temporarily shedding players out of their ability to gain new currency after they die, and pretty much making fun players as their ninja character succumbs to death every time, in a comedic manner.

That jokey element is most-apparent in the boss battles, with dialogue boxes showcasing insecure monsters and demons trying to sound menacing with a practiced speech.

They are also incredibly colorful, with a lot of variety in attacks and presentation — everything from a steampunk elderly-robot, a leaf monster, a pair of one-eyed demon twins, a sky serpent and a variety of golems. The fights range from relying almost-exclusively on jump attacks to a tennis-like back-and-forth of power balls.

The Messenger is delightful particularly because of how unexpectedly great it is. Every element — from presentation to gameplay — is pitch-perfect. It utilizes nostalgia for a deeper gameplay that is decidedly modern. It’s fun, funny and impossible to stop playing. This is a must-have.

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The Messenger (Sabotage Studio)

Dir. Thierry Boulanger

Available on PC and Nintendo Switch

Reviewed on the Switch

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