Nefarious
Year: 2018
Rating: T
Time Played: 3.5 hours
I can appreciate when a game tries to do something different. Where most mascot platformers have the main character rescuing a princess from a villain, Nefarious flips that on its head and has the villain capturing these princesses and fighting the hero. I picked up this game because one of the artists I follow worked on it, but a few aspects of the game unfortunately underwhelmed me. After all, a novel idea that isn’t fun to play doesn’t make me want to endure playing it.
While I played through most of this game shortly after I bought it, it languished unfinished in my backlog for a few years before I decided I was probably close enough to the end to just put it to bed. The art style was unique enough, and the music fit each of the levels well. However, the movement of all the artistic elements felt like a Flash Player game, and the sound effects were a bit too grating. Sure, the writing was funny at times, but I only got to those sections after struggling through the platforming.
I think the biggest sin Nefarious commits is being a platformer that is too frustrating to play. The controls felt floaty, and there were so many times I died from missing a jump or just not having enough margin in the gameplay to get through the level successfully. The difficulty wasn’t in its challenge; it was in fighting against the controls. I understand platformers are usually the “easiest” games to make, but I also recall a lot of terrible platformers from the early days of home video game consoles. If you’re really interested in this game, I’d suggest just watching a let’s play of it.
A neat idea burdened by sub-par gameplay, I give Nefarious 2.5 stars out of 5.
1/2
