Tamarin

Boy oh boy was this not the nostalgia I expected. On it's face this game really makes you think it's going to be a nod to Jetforce Gemini. In a way it is, they use the same sound effect for when they die for fucksake. It is mainly a platformer but also has some section where you are shooting the bugs. It does both of these things pretty poorly. Just the normal traversal is fine but when it comes to the platforming and these challenge races that are needed to progress the story is when things really go downhill. There are a few of these races that require you to run along a path collecting coins, racing against a timer. The timer is as if a speedrunner set it as it is razor thin, with very little room for errors. Pair this with sloppy platforming, a camera that resets to show you the next path that simultaneously doesn't show you where the fuck to go and needing to complete all sections or you wipe, it gets pretty irritating. Thankfully there are only like 4 of these and only 2 really gave me a lot of issues. Then there's the gunplay portion of the game. Mostly taking place in the levels where you rescue your family members to beat the game, you'll run into different types of enemies you'll have to kill. You'd think there'd be a lock on but only for enemies above you, specifically snipers. Otherwise it's some pretty poor free aiming that reminds me of playing an N64 game. I managed to get through it and roll credits, it didn't give me the ending trophy. I was really hoping for something that reminded me of Jetforce Gemini because I absolutely love that game but instead I got a buggy ass tech demo. I will say I enjoy the art style, even if it looks like a PS3 game. There is a lot of color to the world that I think helps the sparse world it's set in. The music is also pretty good.This was made by a small team and it's there first game so I understand it's not going to be super polished but I can't forgive the difficulty of those races. I can't understand how that wasn't brought up in a play test because all they needed to do was add 30 seconds to the timer and I think it would've been much less of a hassle. All I can hope is they take the feedback people have given and improve for their next project.