Hiya Folks, today I am going to do something a little different. Long story cut short; my family bought me a Neon Nintendo Switch for Christmas. Super Mario Odyssey was the only game I was playing for a while (good game btw). I finally decided to go to Nintendo's E-Shop to purchase more games to get me occupied momentarily till I get Legend of Zelda or maybe even Street Fighter's 30 anniversary collection. So first game I purchase was Squareboy vs Bullies: Arena Edition. How did it fare? let's get started!
Gameplay and storyline:
You play as the character named, well, try guess? Squareboy! SB gets bullied by the bullies (yes, that is their gang name) and he seeks revenge by training with a dojo master he refers to as just sensei. SB takes the streets and beats up his attackers. Eventually, we discover ninja bullies are involved and due to SB's interference, his sensei's dojo is trashed and SB thirsts for more justice! You end up fighting on a ship deck and construction site soon after. Thrash them bullies, need I say more?
The game features co-op though this review is written as a one player conquest. Some time has passed and Squareboy now knows Kung Fu. How you use it determines how swiftly you destroy your enemies. You can perform various moves by pressing various combinations with your Joy-con stick and pressing B to attack with A to jump. So this game is really just a two button masher for the most part, but like I said your moves vary depending on the input sequences you put with your joystick. The x button is used only to pick up weapons and health items.
You unlock achievements by performing certain feats and you also have an extra modes which I am still working on. There is a arena mode which pretty much unlocks alternative stages by beating a certain amount of bullies. As you reach your goal, the game becomes more difficult due to a horde of bullies ganging up on you. You will learn to rely on your counter-attack move (a+b while getting hit) to get yourself out of tight spot. The gang up also occurs frequently during story mode though thanks to continues and memorizing bully patterns, you will beat the game within a few hours. Sad to say the gameplay is repetitive but you can't complain much once I get to the final words section.
What were they thinking?
It had to come to this but what is a game without its problems? First off, everybody knows in a beat-em up you can back multiple enemies to a corner and beat them up with the same combo till they all expire one by one. No such luck here. Unless you are using a spin kick or punch, one of your enemies will always manage to kick the stuffing out of you if you use this method, or least half of the time. This has been a tradition in most beat em games such as Final Fight, Streets of Rage, and even Double Dragon. It seems that your combos for the most part can only hit one enemy at a time.
The 2nd and final complaint is the grab move. In order to grab, you need to be near an enemy and press B. To attack your opponent, you just press B. Do you see the fallacy here? Sometimes you get so close to an enemy, SB ends up grabbing the enemy and starts knee bashing his opponent. So what's wrong with this? Let's go back to the first complaint. SB will just sometimes randomly grab one of his multiple back-upped opponent and then while you are knee bashing your opponent because you simply pressed B, the other enemy will punish you for doing so. Why couldn't the grab button be the Y button instead? To attack your foes, you need to get close and press B but you end up sometimes performing a grab instead. Seriously, what were the game developers thinking?
Graphics, controls and Sound:
Nothing too special here. This was meant to have an old-school look, feel and sound to the game. I sometimes found the controls to be tight in response and sometimes they were unresponsive but otherwise it played ok.
Final words:
Why I ain't complaining too much is that the game is only $4.99. You can either pick this up on Steam or Playstation if you don't own a Switch. The game is short and fairly easy to progress through. The game offers unlimited continues though you start back in the beginning of the stage if you lose. You get 25 reward points for purchasing this on the E-shop. If you need something to pass the time, then Squareboy vs Bullies will do the job. Just don't expect anything out-of-this world phenomena to emerge from this game.
Link to pics:
https://www.nintendo.com/games/detail/squareboy-vs-bullies-arena-edition-switch
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