In a world where games like Realm of the Mad God and Shovel Knight get substantial praise, I find myself wondering if calling back to the days of pixel art increases or decreases a games's favorability. Don't get me wrong, I love Realm (though I've never played Shovel Knight), but, as I sort of alluded to in my Dig-n-Rig review, I find that style kind of pretentious. I'm a firm believer that limitations breed creativity, but artificial limitations just rub me the wrong way. Don't get me wrong, not everyone has to go the Deus Ex: Human Revolution route and try to pack the game with as much glorious HD goodness as it can while still maintaining a good aesthetic, but my logic is that if NES games didn't exist, or if the current technology were the starting point, nobody would even think of designing a game in that style. All it really does is call back to a time everyone views favorably as if to say "See guys? We can totally be this good!"
Jeez, what will this guy rant about next? Next he'll spend 2 pages talking about how much he hates HD remakes (don't worry, I'm sure that time will come soon).
Anyway, let's talk about HAVEN from a non-graphical perspective. The game builds itself around combat, as so many games do, and it does so quite well. The blocking and attacking mechanics all flow really nicely into one another. Every enemy has a pattern that you have to figure out and counter. There are not so many enemies that this gets stale and before you know it, the game has taught you how to fight well enough that you can take on the final boss.
It seems like the designers really put thought into every aspect of this game (or just had a series of really luck guesses) because everything sort of acts as a tutorial for what happens next. That's the hallmark of a really well designed game in my opinion.
The final boss fight is challenging enough without being too repetitive. Although, it does come rather close because, since there's no consequence for dying other than having to guide your ghost back to your body, there's no real way to fail at killing the boss, so the fight should be over as soon as the player figures out the pattern. This in mind, the boss's health meter should have been about half as long. Not a dealbreaker, but something to be cautious of.
So yeah. Haven is a neatly wrapped, adrenaline-fueled, fun, pixelated romp that earns my seal of approval. Check it out, it's worth your time, especially considering it's only about 10 minutes long (if even that).
That's all I got for now. Until next time, stay retro
Links
hacky slashy 80s callback: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=26142
