Game:

88 Heroes (2017)

Category:

Review

Duration: 2:12

1,369 views

40

Developed by Bitmap Bureau and published by Rising Star Games, 88 Heroes gives you 88 characters to play with as you make your way through 88 levels. The object of the game is get past enemies and obstacles to reach the door. Bump into a badguy or get hit by something and your character dies. And the next hero is thrown into game. When you complete a stage your hero also changes, so you're always having to adapt to new situations. All of stages were designed so they could be beaten with any character, but some are harder than others. Run out of heroes and it's game over. Collect 88 coins to earn one back. Take longer than 88 minutes to complete the game and you'll need to restart. Each character controls differently, and most of them are enjoyable, and some aren't-- on purpose. Almost all of them have a jump or hover button, some of them can shoot, and you move the camera by holding the trigger and moving the left stick. Why didn't they just map the camera to the right stick? And you'll be moving the camera alot because 88 Heroes has limited real estate. I would have liked to to disabled the OSD or whatever. There's a lot of references to retrogaming and the humor is there. Some of your guys can break through walls or fly you'll always be looking for creative ways to complete the levels. Once you beat the game you unlock solo mode where you can play the whole game as just one hero. There's also another mode where you choose your favorite 8 to play with. There's no leaderboards which is a huge miss. There also should have been challenges for all the heroes and levels to encourage best scores and timed runs. And it would be a nice way to practice all the stages. Overall, 88 Heroes adds a delightful gimmick to 2D platforming that would benefit from having all the levels accessible from the menu. The game is considerably difficult so be prepared to die a lot. I'm really hoping the devs patch-in some stage trials and leaderboards, so there more incentive to go back a revisit it later.