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| Developer: Hudson Soft Publisher: Hudson Soft Released: 1989 Possible Slogan: Bite The Curb |
I want to make something clear: I'm not automatically against hard games on principle.
Some may get that impression from the way I talk about them, but I'm not. I like a little bit of challenge in a game as long as the game is fair.
For example, I'm playing Torchlight II on a higher difficulty than normal. It's going really poorly, but I can tell what I did wrong. I can clearly see that if I restart the game over, I'll do much better on the next playthrough. It's fair.
I would like to think that most people feel the same way about games. Sure, we like a game to push us around a little, but we don't like it when it pushes us to the ground and kicks our ribs while we weep uncontrollably. Even games known for their tremendous difficulty like Dark Souls or DayZ are fair, to a degree.
When a game goes out of its way to absolutely pummel you into the ground no matter what you do, that's no fun. When a game appears to be a normal, happy fun time game and then proceeds to kick you in the teeth repeatedly, that's double plus unfun.
The Adventures of Dino Riki is one of those kind of games. Oh, it starts innocently enough, looking like a top-down shooter with a cute little caveman. Within mere seconds of starting the very first level, though, you're surrounded by enemies and die.
Look, I'm not even exagerrating. Here's a video if you don't believe me. This video was recorded after TONS of practice, and it's as far as I can get without dying.
Your character moves so slowly that you can't really evade these attacks either. I don't know how they assumed that anyone was supposed to be able to beat one level, let alone the game. It was like the designers put together a flow chart on how they wanted the game to play and all they came up with was:
The really odd part is that The Adventures of Dino Riki seems like a relatively polished game in all other aspects. If it wasn't so incredibly and pointlessly difficult this would be a unique and fun experience. I mean, a caveman shooter? That sounds like a blast! As it is, there's not so much a difficulty curve as there is a difficulty brick wall, and embedded in that wall are rusty plague needles and infected shards of hot glass.
It's way too hard to recommend to anyone, but if you happen to be a gaming masochist, go nuts.
Final Rating:
Next Week: Adventures of Gilligan's Island
Believe it or not, one of my sons beat the game. It took weeks of playing time, not contiguous mind you, but he beat it - once.
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