A lot is thrown at you all at once, often while forcing you to deal with some other sort of environmental nightmare, like: orbital laser beams, a creeping mass of instant-kill spikes, a rising elevator that threatens to squish you below instant-kill spikes, or security lasers that, when tripped, will activate extra enemy robots and turrets that mercilessly hunt you down. Some of the best moments came when I was able to dash my way across a level without ever touching the ground.Īll throughout Cyber Shadow’s campaign, it never feels like it’s running out of ideas, and I found myself uniquely challenged by each new chapter even as my abilities and strengths grew. Sprinting gives you the ability to use a super-fast dash slice that can go right through enemies and obstacles, allowing you to use it both as a devastating attack and to reach new areas – sometimes even both at the same time. It’s at this point where it metamorphosizes from a Ninja Gaiden-esque larva state and becomes entirely its own beast.
Essence and SpiritĬyber Shadow really hits its stride just a little more than halfway through, once you gain the ability to sprint. It’s a super fun and creative weapon to use, and I wish I was given more opportunity to do so than the one chapter it’s available in. Or if there’s an enemy straight ahead, you can also strike the blade with your sword to give it some instant forward momentum and take them out from a distance. So if there’s an enemy above you that you can’t hit with your sword, you can simply jump in place until the Swag Blade gets enough momentum to bounce up and down and reach it. This monster tethers a saw blade to your character that can be manipulated through your momentum. My absolute favorite powerup, though, is the aptly named Swag Blade. These powerups are especially cool because they’re almost always specifically designed to be especially useful in the upcoming section for example, a shield that can block projectiles from the front right that becomes available before a particularly bullet-hellish encounter. If that’s not enough, you can spend a currency called essence to unlock permanent upgrades for that specific checkpoint that will either restore your magic or provide you with a powerup when you respawn from there. This limited moveset is a large part of what drives the challenge in the early goings because enemies and obstacles approach from all angles but you can only hit things that are directly in front of you (much like in, you guessed it, Ninja Gaiden).īut this is a modern take on old-school design, and it comes with modern assists to help smooth the hard edges a little: checkpoints not only give you a respawn point but also restore your health when you step on them. Your set of tools begins very modestly: Shadow can jump and can slash his sword horizontally, and. It really hits on all fronts: level design, enemy design, enemy variety, character progression, boss battles – it’s all top notch. Where Cyber Shadow does deliver, however, is in its gameplay. Progen, your master, or the members of your clan he holds captive. There’s little reason to care about the evil Dr. Shadow himself is a mute protagonist, and with one notable exception (who’s gone all too quickly) all of the characters he interacts with largely feel like they exist solely to be exposition dumps. Its big weakness is that there’s just very little personality to any of it. It’s a serviceable story at best, told through both in-game dialogue boxes and nostalgic 8-bit cutscenes with large, detailed, but still very low-res sprites, much like the NES Ninja Gaiden games. Cyber Shadow puts you into the pixelated ninja boots of the titular (cyber) Shadow, who awakens from an incubation pod to find a destroyed city that’s been overrun by out-of-control machines.
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