![]() ![]() You’ll often find places you can’t reach until you have a certain item or ability obtained later. A little bit of exploration will almost always reveal the right path, and if it doesn’t seem like you can cross a huge pit or scale a high wall, it’s probably because you can’t. You are expected to search where to go with almost no direction. There aren’t many puzzles, but the game doesn’t hold your hand, either. ![]() The levels are also clearly designed with speed-running in mind, allowing for paths that move fluidly through them and rewarding practice and skill. She’s not Super Meat Boy, and she’s not trying to be, but her animations are responsive and intuitive, ensuring that it’s no one’s fault but your own if you fail to navigate carefully placed spike walls or a room full of charging enemies. Shantae handles exactly as you might hope from a game inspired by the Metroidvania genre. The quality of the level design and character control are ultimately the life or death of the platformer, and fortunately, developer WayForward treats this with a deft touch. This isn’t a game that takes itself seriously, though its platforming mechanics are nothing to laugh at. The dialogue is skippable, but doing so will skip some truly funny moments, whether it be the sudden intelligence boost Shantae’s friend gets the moment he puts on glasses, or the mayor’s unrepentant uselessness. There’s no voice work, except for the occasional name or exclamation spoken by Shantae. The dialogue is told with high-resolution character portraits standing in for the speakers, though only in limited poses. Along the way, she’ll meet a variety of amusing friends and foes (often both) who provide the game’s true charm. Teaming up with an old nemesis, she sets out to find the source of the evil and defeat the Pirate Lord. The game begins when Shantae wakes up to an invasion of her home town, which she repels, only to find that some dark magic is at work. The bits of story we see are told with such a self-referential and tongue-firmly-in-cheek sensibility that it’s hard not to laugh. The game teaches the use of these abilities with clever level design and provides ample opportunity to gain a mastery of them in the intricate levels that force you to use all of your skills at once. As the game goes on, she slowly collects pirate equipment, allowing her to shoot a gun, float using an over-sized pirate hat as a kite, use a sword to stomp, super-sprint with pirate boots, and air-jump by firing a cannon beneath her. Indeed, at the start, she can only run, jump, and whip her hair to attack enemies (which is amusingly upgradable by using shampoo). However, this time around, those powers have been completely stripped from her. All of this makes Shantae and the Pirates Curse a fun and entertaining romp for its eight-plus hours of play, though it never truly rises above the classic platformers of yore that it heavily draws inspiration from.įor those unfamiliar with the Shantae series, the titular character is a half-genie (and belly-dancer) with magic powers. But give it an hour-or-so and the dialogue suddenly seems legitimately funny, the pixel-art visuals come to life, and the mechanics grow to include a number of original and interesting ideas. Out of the gate, its primitive sprite-based visuals, campy dialogue and simplistic mechanics appear bewilderingly outdated. Like the great platformers Metroid and Castelvania, Shantae and the Pirates Curse needs time to reveal its full potential. Platform: PC via Steam, Wii U, Nintendo 3DS Developer: WayForward Technologies, Inti Creates
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