{"id":4726,"date":"2026-05-08T15:00:19","date_gmt":"2026-05-08T21:00:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/?p=4726"},"modified":"2026-04-29T20:54:42","modified_gmt":"2026-04-30T02:54:42","slug":"video-game-the-messenger-2018","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/2026\/05\/08\/video-game-the-messenger-2018\/","title":{"rendered":"VIDEO GAME: The Messenger (2018)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"TheThe Messenger
<\/u><\/strong>Year: 2018
Rating: E10+
Time Played: 867 minutes \/ 14.27 hours<\/p>\n

For years, I had heard The Messenger<\/em> was a great game that evoked the nostalgia of retro video games from the early home console eras. I picked it up on sale, but didn\u2019t start playing it for a while. When I did, I found myself struggling with some of the bosses and had to put it down for an even longer time. Finally, I determined I was probably close to the end of the game and forced myself to finish it. I was pleasantly surprised to find I was only half-way through the game and the second half completely changed my opinion of it.<\/p>\n

While I love the retro pixel art aesthetic that games like The Messenger<\/em> try to achieve, I tend to like the 16-bit style more than the 8-bit one that this game starts with. As soon as the game introduced the mechanic to switch between these art styles, the story of the game became much more complex, and this retro-inspired platformer morphed into a Metroidvania. I\u2019ve never experienced a genre switch quite like this, and it completely changed how I played the game once that transition happened. A game I was forcing myself to finish became a pleasure to complete.<\/p>\n

Of course, it\u2019s difficult to recommend people play a game because it has some twist half-way through that makes it way better. I also managed to cheese the death punishment system by just resetting each time I died so I wouldn\u2019t lose the crystals that help to unlock parts of the skill tree. I don\u2019t think this was the way the game was intended to be played, but it was easier to deal with the upgrade economy once I figured it out. Still, if you\u2019re into retro games like Ninja Gaiden<\/em> and Super Metroid<\/em>, The Messenger<\/em> should be right up your alley.<\/p>\n

A unique genre-bending, retro-inspired game that takes some getting used to, I give The Messenger<\/em> 4.0 stars out of 5.<\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The MessengerYear: 2018Rating: E10+Time Played: 867 minutes \/ 14.27 hours For years, I had heard The Messenger was a great game that evoked the nostalgia of retro video games from the early home console eras. I picked it up on sale, but didn\u2019t start playing it for a while. When I did, I found myself […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,1900],"tags":[1020,3882,2376,4499,1903,3881,8,4498,674,906],"class_list":["post-4726","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-4-0-stars","category-video-game","tag-1020","tag-devolver-digital","tag-metroidvania","tag-ninja-gaiden","tag-platformer","tag-retro-inspired","tag-review","tag-the-messenger","tag-time-travel","tag-video-game"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4726","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4726"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4726\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4732,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4726\/revisions\/4732"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4726"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4726"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4726"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}