Rex Rocket Reviews

The adorable Lego-esque characters indicate nothing; this run-and-gun adventure is one sexy wave of thumb-destroying difficulty after another, punctuated by boss battles that would make Rockman shed tears of burning plasma! The polished controls (and there's just a bit of that good ol' arcade floatiness in there) make it a true pleasure to die, again and again. And what presentation! [i]Rex Rocket[/i]'s sprawling megaship and everything therein is built from yummy 16-bit sugar bricks, with tasteful dashes of contemporary lighting and physics worked into the mortar. From its guts to its glamor, the game is a true embodiment of what it means to be [i]neoretro[/i]! Ready to take a ride on the sweet pain train to a mythical 1993? Then [i]Rex Rocket[/i] is your ticket! (I know this game is described as an 8-bit tribute by the creator, but visuals, sound and gameplay are really much more in line with SNES style.)

This game was very short, but I had a blast while playing. The controls were crisp, and the platforming was difficult enough to be a challenge, but not so hard that it ruined the fun. The fast pace of the game meant that it always felt fresh and new. I wish more games could be like this.

During the Steam Winter Sale, I happened upon this game in my discovery queue. A fan of hard platformers (Bionic Commando, Castlevania, Contra, Mega Man, Super Meat Boy), I believed it to be a good idea to go ahead and make the purchase. I've played it for a little less than an hour. The platforming is slippery, the enemies are either overpowered or in such large numbers as to be overwhelming, the jumping is floaty. Nothing that hasn't been written before. However... All of those games I had listed before shared the same difficulty curve as Rex Rocket. The only difference being, if I had died and lost a life in those other games, it was my fault. Playing the game over and over again lead to developing the techniques needed to beat the game. Platform technique memorization in a game like the first Castlevania was not only encouraged, but absolutely necessary. Point being, if you lost a life, it was your fault. Hard, but not unfair, and this type of development, getting into the game's world and learning the facets of it, is why I love the genre. This game isn't like that. Within this last hour, I found myself struggling to avoid screaming bullshit at my monitor. Traps, spike pits, acid pools, repeated dialogue during boss fights, and randomly-placed enemies with no indications as to where they will appear do not good game design make. The difficulty, when coupled with the controls and enemy placement (as well as other mechanics) are completely crippling to the fun factor of this game, making it feel like a chore to play. Instead of continuing after I lose a life, I just feel like quitting. Woe betide those who buy this game, expecting a return to retreux-styled glory, for you will only be met with disappointment.

I finished this thing. The bosses are hard but fair I think (with the exception of teleport bot due to pink-bullet move RNG). However, the levels themselves can be so filled with things designed to kill you if you don't already know what's coming that it just evokes feelings of madness and rage. It feels at times like the developers were trolling players with the level of thought they put into making sure some of the maps would definitely kill you on the first X tries. I would say that this is an EXTREME difficulty title, much more difficult than Environmental Station Alpha or Cave Story for example, but less so than I Wanna Be The Boshy. The optional items (mostly) require extreme platforming skills and they don't really help you defeat the bosses very much, which doesn't feel very rewarding. I skipped them after looking up just what was at the end of those insane optional platforming sections. Overall: This game should have been called Super Kaizo Gunner. I would only recommend picking it up if you're looking for an extreme kaizo platforming challenge. The level of difficulty definitely evokes feelings of the Kaizo Mario ROM hacks, although to be fair there are no invisible death traps in this game.

I'm only a little bit into this fantastic game but I have to say it took me by surprise. I was expecting an easy little 8-bit game that I'd breeze through, what I got was a challenging game that had me cursing at my screen. This game is a very beautiful and challenging game with a retro feel to it. Full of references to the games of old, like Mario. It's can get frustrating as you will die a lot, and the enemies are always outnumbering you, plus the bosses are always stronger than you and often have enemies to fight with them. This however is just a gamplay feature, it's meant to be hard and it's meant to kill you over and over again until you learn to fight them properly or just get lucky. The game plays like the classic games of the gameboy era, with the simple run and shoot mechanics, paired with things like wall jumping and secondary weapons. Really a treat to play. I give this game a solid 9/10 and highly recommend it to anyone looking for a challenging, if nostalgic game.

This game is very similar to Mega Man. I love how the keys can be mapped to any keys on the keyboard. Very appealing 2D graphics Checkpoints that are reasonably placed along the levels. I will definitely have to play this game more. The download is small and the game contains achievements and trading cards. Worth the purchase.

I came close to recommending Rex Rocket as I was enjoying it for the first couple of hours, but then I was not. The game has a great setting that riffs on the space opera theme. It has good controls and it's mostly fun fighting enemies and progressing. Except, it gradually changes for the worse as the game gets harder. I was on a screen recently where I had to progress up, and when I jumped up, sometimes a previously off-screen laser would instakill me. A bit before that I was on a screen where the floor is lasers and they instakilled me when I touched them. The whole instakill mechanic becomes very pronounced around the 2 hour mark. I often enjoy difficult games, but not when it feels this arbitrary. So I stopped.

Come aboard the S.S. Montana and fight against an army of slimes, rogue robots & the wicked AI itself in this difficult Metroidvania game, Rex Rocket. [u]The Good >> A Tad Overkill:[/u] Easily, the best area about Rex Rocket has to be the soundtrack. The soundtrack starts good, but as you progress through the game, it gets better & better, and each boss in the game, if I’m right, that would be 10, has their own battle themes. The game’s main composer, [url=https://saskrotch.bandcamp.com/]Saskrotch[/url], does an excellent job providing an energetic & upbeat selection for the music. In fact, the texts next to my good, bad and ugly sections are some of my favorite tracks from the game. If you haven’t done so already, check out his page on Bandcamp, he has more music selection that you all might enjoy as well. [u]The Bad >> This Ends Here:[/u] This game carries lives and you can find extra lives all over the place. Just a reminder, Rex Rocket is setup as a Metroidvania game. With that said, the lives don’t matter, just like the score in the original Mega Man. When you die, you start back from the last checkpoint that you passed, and when you lose all your lives and get the game over message, you start back, once again, from the last checkpoint that you passed and no other additional penalties are given. So… yeah, the lives are pointless. [u]The Ugly >> Red Level Days:[/u] Near the end of the game, I noticed that there were a few issues presented. Such issues that I noticed was in one of the optional sections where you can get the Grenade Launcher, the rotating platforms don’t hold your position. Instead, they act as if you’re on a conveyer belt. Another instance was the confrontation with the final boss, where if you dash into it, the boss’ dialogue will be stuck in a loop. I can’t remember of any other late game issues at the moment, but for warning sakes, a few areas in the game has issues. A great metroidvania game with old school difficulty and an amazing soundtrack, which I can’t get enough of, gives me easy reasons to recommend this game. If you like any of the mentioned areas in a game, then you should give Rex Rocket a go.

I still haven't beaten this game, but the 3 or so hours I've played have been a blast. The game is hard, but very fair. Bosses are tough to kill, but once you've taken a few tries, you'll figure em out and will be able to kill em. Movement is a skill thing, with the double jumping being you shooting your gun downwards. I don't know what else to say other than this is a retro game that takes the best of what I remember the old NES games to be like, slaps a brand new coat of paint, and rocks it out. It's just a shame this game didn't take off. It's an 8/10 for me for sure.

I am going to recommend this, but with some mild hesitation. First things first, it really captures the retro style, feeling a little mega man, a little Super Metroid, and a little Cave Story (I mean, you have to make it somewhat modern, right?) If this appeals to you, you are probably about sold, but just let me continue. If you are familiar with the way Capcom retreaded the NES style Mega Man series, you might be aware that it included more instant death traps than any game previously. Well, this game is filled with those things as well, and you'll be quite aware of that by the time you start getting into the depths that this game offers. Because this game is harder than any of the games I've mentioned so far. And you know what, maybe that's your thing. Frankly, I'm OK with that. The nice thing is that the game takes advantage of years of experience to know what kind of classic mistakes that old games can... Oh, what, there's a lives system? Well then. In truth, the lives are not as bad as it seems. You can die several times but when you run out, it's not start-over game over. In fact, you end up in a room, progress saved, but you will have to find your way back to your last location. This is not necessarily an enormous detriment... except it is VERY spare on teleport locations, and some parts of the game... you are going to die plenty. This can lead to rather a few revisits to rooms that probably killed you a couple times as well. If you haven't stocked up enough lives, you might be in pretty big trouble. I will say this to their benefit, though: there are many rooms where you can flick a switch to remove an energy barrier that lets you take a shortcut through the room to skip parts of it, but even then you'd still have to make your way through some tricky bits. I don't even want to think about how many times I died in some sections so far, and I'm about 2/3s of the way through. The thing is though, these levels are quite well designed. I feel like a connoiseur of platformers would be able to appreciate this, but unless you are a master, you have to be prepared for grinding through some particularly nasty bits to get further. So basically, if you have not been frightened away by this idea, and possibly if you don't get frustrated easily, give this a go. I should also note, great visual assets and a wonderful soundtrack. If that pushes you over the edge, great, but if not, don't say I didn't warn you ;)