During the first few generations of consoles I loved a good platformer. I would seek out the new Spyro or Donkey Kong with an eager lust for the next big platform goodness. Then, as I got older, my tastes changed and the colourful cartoon worlds, collecting coins and jumping around madly seemed old and boring compared with the new delights the more recent flashier consoles had to offer. Kyurinaga’s Revenge is a throwback to those old days of platform fun and tricky jumpy gameplay. It was a nice journey to go back on, like slipping into a warm bath, but sometimes going back to something in the past sees that bath get cold very quickly indeed.
Kyurinaga’s Revenge is a 2D platformer in a 3D world, and a direct sequel to one that was released last year, which got blasted by the critics for its broken qualities. Something is afoot in feudal Japan and it is up to you to put it right, playing as both a ninja onion and a ninja broccoli. Yes that right, you’re a couple of lean, mean fighting machine ninja… vegetables? Shogun Kyurinaga is seeking revenge on our vegetable buddies and you have to seek some weapons of god in order to put him down. The story isn’t the most important thing here as it didn’t make much sense to me, but never mind, because it’s the platforming that I’ve come for.
The game is to be played in either solo or co-op, but since I had no one on hand to play with I’m reviewing this game alone, and it was left to me to switch between the two characters with the press of the LB button. Each character has different skills and abilities; the onion can move blocks, and lay down bombs, whilst the broccoli fella can throw spears at targets and said bombs to blow them up. The game is mostly all about platform jumping fun, with the usual double jumps thrown in, with intense timing and bits of luck dotted around. The difficulty level is high and quite a bit annoying, especially when you only have just one life, but there are plenty of checkpoints in place. There’s a part of the game, which is a QTE combat mini game, whereby you switch between the two characters, mashing down the buttons that appear on the screen. This is fairly easy to complete, even though the button response time isn’t as great as it should be.
Then there are the boss levels, which frankly I hate more then death itself. Why? I could go on all day, but it’s basically just got an old fashioned mid-nineties feel to it which is tired and boring. The whole gameplay is good and it does the job it’s meant to do, but there is a lack of pace and urgency to the game that is severely lacking. The pace of the character’s movement and turning feels a bit off from what it should be, and if you compare it to some of the newest platform games around, Kyurinaga’s Revenge doesn’t quite cut the mustard.
Its looks are pretty good mind, but still look very old hat with its lack of gloss and standard flattish character design. The backdrops are colourful and the tone feels right in its coverage of a version of feudal Japan. When I got to the first Boss level the graphics felt really old fashioned, much like a PS1 or Nintendo 64 title, but sometimes there is nothing wrong with that and this game doesn’t suffer from its looks. It’s more like seeing an old friend who’s just a bit out of shape at the moment. The cut scenes look great, with their comic book styling, whilst the soundtrack is also spot on, with relaxing period pieces of music for the platform worlds and more frenetic “street fighter” music for the combat QTE sections. The effects themselves are decent and consistent with the gameplay, working well within the game world. There isn’t any voice over at all and I feel that’s a mistake as it really needs one. It would give the characters an extra dimension and make them feel more alive from their 2D world. Maybe this would also help the story, which you can lose focus on from just reading the subtitles. And that’s a shame because you might miss some of the humour and nuances that the experience offers.
Overall, Kyurinaga’s Revenge has essentially nothing wrong with it gameplay wise. It’s a good old-fashioned solid platform, coin collecting, Kung-Fu beat them up type of thing. But everything about it feels so dated – from the graphics to the pacing. Its story and characters could be a lot of fun, but are lost a bit in the game and don’t really reach out to their audience. The checkpoints are great, but if you leave a level half way through, the next time you fire things up, you have to start the level again. I can’t do this nowadays – I had trouble with it in 1998, but now I want my saved game to start off where I left it.
There is however a good game in here and there is some fun to be had, but it could have been so much better with a bit of extra spit and polish.
