Clash Force

Clash force really does not pay mine: it is a "small" retro game originally sold to less than one euro on iPhone, which has been improved quite marginally during its porting on steam. And yet, I spent almost six hours very pleasant, the game honoring its contract retro to perfection... Speaking of "contract", clash force is part of its introduction in the line of contra or Gunstar heroes, but with a much more minimalist gameplay: the maneuverability is close to that of Mega Man (you can only shoot in front of oneself, you can not Crouch, the platformer is very present), and its philosophy of level design reminds a lot of the first Super Mario Bros. -There is no vertical scrolling, just a horizontal scrolling, and few mechanics or different enemies. Despite the great simplicity of its gameplay and its obstacles, the game manages to renew itself pleasantly by matching the same elements in various and intelligent ways, making clash force a very "arcade" game, very nervous and very direct, which makes you want to go back to victory. The game has five worlds of three levels each plus a boss, to add four exclusive levels to the "difficult" mode and a final boss articulated in two parts, for a total of 25 levels. The difficulty levels "normal" and "difficult" are very well dosed (only the level design differs, it is excellent in "difficult"), even if the four levels exclusive to "difficult" mode are in my opinion too long (there is neither checkpoints nor lives in the game , but you can retry the same level indefinitely). The level of difficulty "expert", meanwhile, accelerates the speed of the bullets and drastically limits the health of the heroes, which in my opinion is not very interesting. The bosses are just correct. Technically, the realization of clash force is really good: I read a little everywhere that the game is a tribute to the NES, but the parallaxes scrollings, the color palette, the graphic style and some effects evoke rather the mega drive, which is rather a positive point as far as I am concerned. The proposed CRT filter (to imitate old TVs) is excellent. Successes are very well thought out, with interesting goals. By buying clash force, I was afraid of falling on a generic and mediocre game, but I highly recommend it and I now watch the games of spicy gyro games.