Narita boy the underground garden software#

The result is a two-minute-long blurry obstacle course that largely comes down to memorization, much like that infamous Battletoads level pretty much everyone has hated since 1991. The problem is that when you boost you move so fast, and it pushes you so far to the right side of the screen, that it becomes practically impossible to react to whatever is coming next. Even more frustrating is that in order to avoid taking damage from certain enemies, you have to boost through them. But here you’re moving extremely fast and the obstacles that you need to jump over are just a little too hard to see. Upon clearing the Yellow House area you have to ride on a stag in a very familiar speeder bike-esque section that you’ve probably seen a hundred times in other games – think Bit.Trip Runner’s side-scrolling obstacle dodging, just without the rhythm element. But there’s one transition in Narita Boy that I need to talk about in detail, because it is the closest I’ve ever gotten to rage-quitting a game that I was assigned to review. Surfing on a floppy disc and transitioning from skidding along the water’s surface to jumping back onto solid ground is good fun, as is the power fantasy of transforming into a giant robot and utterly smashing everything in your way. At Its WorstĮach area of Narita Boy is capped off with a big event to transition into the next one, and usually these are among the highpoints of the whole campaign. The world of Narita Boy may be absolutely gorgeous to look at, with visually spectacular backdrops throughout each of its three major color-coded zones, but I eventually grew numb to them running back and forth between them over and over again, picking up and delivering keys while trying to keep track of which ones are for which locks without any sort of map drains them of their novelty after a while. Platforming and exploration follow the same trail limped along by Narita Boy’s combat: they never really cross that threshold of being anything better than just “fine” on a fundamental level. It just never rises above that baseline level of what combat should be in an action platformer like this, leaving it somewhat amusing but relatively one-note the whole way through when compared to evolving games like Ori or Guacamelee. None of this means that combat in Narita Boy is outright bad, and I wouldn’t even go as far as to say that it’s shallow, because the enemies do require that you learn their patterns, as simple as they are. As a result, combat gets stale early on and stays that way. That makes them feel more like keys than actual techniques, only to be used when you see the right enemy-shaped lock. For example, there’s a shoulder bash that’s only really used on one shielded enemy type, and an uppercut that’s primarily just used to hit the few enemies that fly.

Rather than changing the way you approach a fight to keep things fresh, the techniques you unlock are more designed around giving you a way to deal with a specific new enemy type. That’s an alright base, but none of the abilities that you gain as you progress ever make engaging with combat any more fun. There are some really great animations, hits are impactful, and the way enemies die is super satisfying to look at – but the big problem is that, at the outset, there really isn’t much to your arsenal of moves outside of a basic three-hit sword combo, close-range shotgun blast, and powerful beam attack. They tie together the digital and physical worlds in a way that’s rather clever.hack//slashĪs far as combat goes, Narita Boy looks more impressive than it actually feels to play. What’s especially neat about them is the way they help bring better understanding to the digital world that you’re playing through. Each time I unlocked one it felt like a gift I couldn’t wait to unwrap: these bite-sized story sequences are easily the highpoint of Narita Boy as a whole, as Lionel’s story is an emotional one to watch unfold, with wonderful music box-like tunes adeptly setting the tone.

The real meat of it is communicated as you unlock Lionel’s memories and play through 13 really well-done flashback sequences that chronicle his life all the way from childhood to the present. However, that is a huge oversimplification of Narita Boy’s hard-to-follow overarching plot, which is bogged down with technical jargon and boring exposition dumps.įortunately though, that setup is not the main attraction of Narita Boy’s story. The boy assumes the role of the titular hero, “Narita Boy,” and sets out on an adventure to restore Lionel’s memories, defeat HIM, and save the digital world.

Narita boy the underground garden software#

You play as a young boy who suddenly gets dragged into a digital world after its creator, a genius hardware and software developer named Lionel Pearl, gets his memories stolen by a malicious program known as HIM.