{"id":18263,"date":"2018-09-19T00:01:26","date_gmt":"2018-09-19T00:01:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/?p=18263"},"modified":"2018-09-11T21:34:12","modified_gmt":"2018-09-11T21:34:12","slug":"the-messenger-switch-ps4-pc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/2018\/09\/19\/the-messenger-switch-ps4-pc\/","title":{"rendered":"The Messenger (Switch, PS4, PC)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>In the distant future, demons have taken over the land and only a scant few humans remain.\u00a0 A clan of ninjas hide out on a remote island protecting the prophecy of a savior delivering a message on a scroll.\u00a0 You are a ninja in this clan and end up being the messenger in the prophecy.\u00a0 Now it\u2019s up to you to save the day in this 8- and 16-bit retro styled 2-D platforming adventure.\u00a0 It\u2019s available to download on nearly all current consoles and PC, but reviewed on Switch here.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s obvious that the NES classic Ninja Gaiden was the biggest inspiration for this game.\u00a0 As a ninja, you can swing your sword to dispatch enemies and learn skills like climbing walls, throwing stars, and later on you can learn to glide and use a grappling hook.\u00a0 Probably your most important move is a special kind of double jump.\u00a0 When you hit an enemy or lantern in the air, you\u2019ll be able to jump again before hitting the ground.\u00a0 You can chain these jumps and attacks to cross wide pits and other obstacles, but unfortunately it\u2019s not always easy to do.<\/p>\n

As you defeat enemies and smash lanterns, you\u2019ll earn special shards you can use to buy upgrades at the shops that appear at nearly every checkpoint.\u00a0 You can buy more health bars and other powers to help.\u00a0 Hidden away are green coins that can give you a special power if you can find them all, too.\u00a0 When you die, you start out at the last checkpoint.\u00a0 You get unlimited lives and continues, but when you lose in this game, a little demon will come out and take any crystals you collect for a while.\u00a0 It\u2019s a little annoying penalty, but it\u2019s probably better than having set lives and continues.<\/p>\n

The game starts out very linear, and in an 8-bit environment.\u00a0 Then about halfway through, you travel to the future and everything changes to 16-bit, which is a neat effect.\u00a0 After that, supposedly you can travel to previous areas and view them in 8- and 16-bit.\u00a0 But unfortunately I couldn\u2019t get that far because the game gets just too darn hard.\u00a0 It starts out fairly manageable, like \u201cMega Man Hard\u201d but quickly gets to be \u201cNinja Gaiden Hard.\u201d\u00a0 I can beat most Mega Man games, but I can\u2019t beat Ninja Gaiden.\u00a0 They rely too much on insta-death pits, spikes, and lava, and I couldn\u2019t get past a boss that moves three times as fast as you and requires you to double jump using lanterns that constantly change.\u00a0 Yeah no thanks.\u00a0 Plus I don\u2019t think you should have to wait until more than halfway through a game to get to the good stuff.\u00a0 It\u2019s a shame, really, because if it weren\u2019t for the difficulty and pacing, this game would be nearly \u201cShovel Knight good.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Kid Factor:<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Messenger is rated E-10 with an ESRB descriptor of Fantasy Violence.\u00a0 You can hit pixelly monsters with your sword, but they just explode when defeated.\u00a0 Reading skill is helpful for the text, and younger gamers may get frustrated at the high difficulty.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the distant future, demons have taken over the land and only a scant few humans remain.\u00a0 A clan of ninjas hide out on a remote island protecting the prophecy of a savior delivering a message on a scroll.\u00a0 You are a ninja in this clan and end up being the messenger in the prophecy.\u00a0 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":18253,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18263","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-game-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18263","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18263"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18263\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18265,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18263\/revisions\/18265"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18253"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18263"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18263"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18263"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}