Game Info
GAME NAME: Rock Boshers DX: Director’s Cut
DEVELOPER(S): Tikipod Ltd
PUBLISHER(S): Tikipod Ltd
PLATFORM(S): Vita, PS4
GENRE(S): Twin-Stick Shooter
RELEASE DATE(S): December 9, 2014
Retro games have come in many different forms lately. Most of them honor the great 8-bit and 16-bit eras of the late 80s to early 90s. But new Vita release Rock Boshers DX: Director’s Cut from Tikipod reaches back a little further to the good ol’ Commodore 64 days. Even more specifically, to the days you would load games off of a cassette tape instead of a floppy disk. What’s a cassette tape you say? Get off my lawn, I say.
Rock Boshers DX: Director’s Cut is a top-down twin-stick shooter from the same people that brought us Aqua Kitty: Milk Mine Defender just a few weeks ago. You play a young queen in an alternate 1880s where people have been tricked into being rock-crushing slaves on a settlement on Mars. It’s up to you to rescue you’re fellow slaves and escape the red planet. You do this by solving puzzles and shooting bad guys with your unlimited ammo pistol and other various limited ammo weapons you find along the way. Each level is a one screen affair, allowing you to see everything there is to offer so you can figure out your plan of attack, with the goal usually making it to an elevator to move up to the next level. This elevator is usually blocked by colored gates that can be unlocked with keys that are strategically placed throughout the area. Each level also contains three different foodstuffs, which open up minigames in the arcade once enough of each is collected.
The action starts out calmly as you merely need to use your pistol to bust the rocks blocking your exit, but things ramp up pretty quickly. You’ll have to have great timing and better dodging skills to make it through all 24+ stages. Your character and the enemies all move well throughout the maps and my many deaths never felt cheap. Some levels will be passed quickly, while others, especially the middle ones, will take multiple playthroughs. There is a wide variety enemy types that have unique ways to attack you and move pretty smartly as they try to waste you. Saving ammo for your different weapons is a must for some of the large hordes that form. The analog sticks respond very well for both movement and shooting, though you are limited to just eight directions of each, so it’s not true analog aiming. Along with the single-screen room escape levels, you get boss battles and a couple of other different game play types to keep things fresh. All of them are fun though. While I would sometimes get frustrated dying in some of the more frantic levels, I always wanted to come back and play some more. And if you need a break from liberating the slaves, you can jump into the arcade to play one of the four minigames on offer. There’s a pretty good variety here as well, from blasting a large hunk of cheese to collect gems in a hazardous environment, to running around a tower collecting gems while avoiding ghosts and other enemies, to shooting bad guys while flying in your spaceship, to a de-make of TikiPod’s already-retro Aqua Kitty: Milk Mine Defender. These probably won’t hold your interest for that long, but they can be fun and there are leaderboard positions to chase.
The main thing people are probably going to remember this game for, though, is the very scaled down graphics. Purposely made with a palette of only 15 colors, this is what retro looks like to other retro games. As soon as you boot the game up, you’re hit with this as they show a mock tape-loading screen that I remember all to well. Once you get in the game, all the characters are small and undetailed. It’s hard to really tell what food collectables really are meant to be (except the cheese, because cheese). I don’t think this is a bad thing, because this is the art style they tried to replicate, and as a player of a ton of those old games, they nailed it. The only complaint I had was when it was hard to tell where exactly my character was when a level started. Most times I’d have to run in a circle for a few seconds to find out exactly where I was. I understand how some people (mostly young whippersnappers) will be turned off by this and won’t give the game a second glace because of it. Hell, even I thought the de-makes had gone to far when I saw the initial screenshots. But I’m glad I gave it a chance because it works well in action. The soundtrack is an equally nostalgic chip-tune smorgasbord of goodness. Everything comes together to create a fantastic time warp and tribute to an era that many game historians forget.
THE RECOMMENDATION
If you’re a fan of old-school games, I would definitely give this a go. But even if you’re not, I would consider taking a look at it. It won’t take forever to complete and there is a good sense of accomplishment when you do because of the decent challenge presented. Don’t let the 15 colors and tiny characters scare you. This game is fun to play.
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