It is isn’t too often that I pick up a game that I just cannot put down. I play a lot of games intermittently, but as many of you all know, I don’t get to play nearly as much as I used to. Which seems a bit odd when I own the best game store in the tri-state area.
The startup, entrepreneur, small business life definitely capitalizes a lot more time than I would like it to some days. Add to that on top of being husband and father, I don’t get to spend more than a few hours on games each week. I do get to experience different games through all of you who come in and play games all the way through, so thank you for helping me in that regard!
Anyways, The Messenger is a game that has been recommended to me several times, but traditionally as an independent developed game it was digital only. Making it harder for me to justify the expense and installing it on one of my systems. I often tell customers that I would have to purchase it four times, one for each of my Switches.
Well, luck would have it that Limited Run did a physical copy edition of the game, normally these can be found on eBay for around $80-90. So, why exactly would I want to go for the physical release at this point? I’d spend just as much with the digital purchases. A topic for my “Another Castle” blog will go into detail about physical vs digital arguments, but for now, let’s just say that I want to keep our inventory streamlined physically as best as possible. My patience was rewarded when I found the game listed for around $60. I sniped it as soon as I saw it.
I sat down with the game on a Thursday night, generally our slowest night of the week, and I played it for a few hours straight. Due to the busy weekend, I didn’t get to play it too much while the store was open. Every now and then I will bring a Switch home for a weekend, which I did this particular weekend. Between Sunday and Monday (our weekend), not having a lot on my “honey-do” list, I sunk some serious time into the game. It completely scarfed my brain, and was the only thing I could think about in my spare time. I quite literally couldn’t put it down, and the hours flew by. I was able to collect all the Power Seals, and complete the game in under 12 hours. I think I may have spent more time on it, as I don’t know how exactly the time is tracked.
The Messenger is a throwback to the Ninja Gaiden days on the NES with a lot neat power-ups. It is more forgiving in my opinion, particularly because of the checkpoint system. Should you die, there is a demon, Quarple, that will follow you for a short while eating the Time Shards (currency) you’d normally collect. This was its “fee” for teleporting you at the last instant before you would have otherwise died.
There is a really neat mechanic about the game you don’t discover until about halfway through the story. The majority of the time you are exploring the world in NES-style, 8-bit graphics, but at a certain point, you are thrusted into a time travel situation that catapults you into the future, which is depicted by fancier 16-bit, SNES-style graphics.
After this point, you continue to find pieces to a puzzle in more of a Metroidvania-like manner to save the world and the last of humanity from extinction. As you do this, you will bounce between 8-bit and 16-bit versions of the game. It isn’t just an artistic leap however, the music and sound effects are effected as well. The nostalgia trip alone was worth the time invested into this game.
The game controls extremely well, and really felt like an old NES action-platformer. I didn’t have hardly any issues with the game. One bug that cropped up involved the controller slowly getting more and more laggy. If I left the game on pause for too long, say to help a customer, when I came back the lag would be instantly noticeable. The only way I was able to resolve the issue was to muscle myself to the next or previous checkpoint, and re-boot the game. Annoying, but not the end of the world. I will add that there is a patch you can download that seemed to improve upon this issue.
If you haven’t played a Devolver game before, you will definitely enjoy the 4th wall breaking narrative. Not only do they often make fun of video game tropes, but they do so in a way that doesn’t make it irrelevant to the situation going on. I also enjoyed the flavor text Quarple will say to you every time you die. There are a lot of them, so it took several deaths before I finally running into repeats. Some of the jokes that get setup had me quite literally rolling in my chair in hysterical tears. I especially loved the bit where you get a hat while in the future, and the shopkeep envies it to the point of getting his own hat.
There are a decent number of power ups to grind for, and even a late game NPC that will help you find ways to literally “throw money down the drain.” I do think they could have used a few more upgrades, but I do like the “money sink” that they created. Once you’ve beaten the game, there is a really neat “New Game+” feature that ups the difficulty, and allows you to retain one item from a previous run. However, if you are out of time shards and die, then you will restart your save file to New Game +1. So if you died in New Game +3, you’d go back to +1.
There is also a free DLC expansion that adds a unique item to the game. This new item adds a new variety of options to your playthroughs, and helps the game feeling fresh. I feel like I could go on and on about the game, but I’ll instead leave you with my favorite song from the OST. The music is really well done, and the stage “Bamboo Creek” has one of my favorite songs to jive to called “Bamboo Boogaloo.” It’s also just fun to say its name.
My Favorite: Bamboo Boogaloo
Disk 1: The Past (8-bit NES style)
Disk 2: The Future (16-bit SNES style)
Anyways, if you haven’t checked out The Messenger yet, I highly recommend you do. Especially if you are a nostalgia geek like myself. We have it ready to go for our Switches in the arcade!
