Topic: My opinion of Bit Boy

Despite reading many mediocre reviews of Bplus's latest title, I still found myself wantign to buy it and try it out for myself, and I'm glad I did.

From the beginning, you can tell what the developers were going for. The experience is very true to the retro gaming formula, with a plethora of monsters to work your way around, tricky dead ends to maneuver through and a high level of difficulty. Even when you get to the 8-bit generation and get the ability to attack enemies, you must use your attacks wisely so you don't lose them all early on. It requires a level of knowledge of the genre that I know I personally lacked and I'm thinking the old-school style of difficulty was part of the hate surrounding the game. Moving up through the generations, it's great to see how gaming evolved and how the core gameplay changed with it. I found the 16-bit levels to be the most fun, probably because it was the easiest to see what was happening in them compared to the other generations.

After beating the game and unlocking Warp Mode, a game mode focused aroung getting the highest score possible, the experience becomes even more authentic. I'm usually not a fan of working for high scores, but Bit Boy really drew me into it. I've heard that you can play in a Turbo Classic and Turbo Warp mode, but I haven't figured out how to unlock them yet. However, the 999 lives/attacks mode is amusing for a while. It feels really good to be able to glide through the levels with total ease after having to work through them normally for so long!

Overall, I thought Bit Boy was a very enjoyable experience and a good outing by Bplus. It's not an easy game, nor is it a very long one, but the experience is genuine and all about trying over and over again to beat that darn high score.

The thing is that Pac Man had no dead ends.

But this isn't Pac-man.

It is one of my most favorite wiiware game so far.

Yes but he calls the dead ends a retro throwback when even the earliest games like that didn't have them.

you havent played much earliest games.

And besides, so what about dead ends? They don't really hurt gameplay.

Having your own high score is meaningless....it really needs a worldwide online leaderboard to compare against everyone.

I liked Bit Boy!! too. Plattchen was there best game though.

Bit Boy is actually pretty enjoyable up through the 16-bit levels, but I have to say that the 3D generations just get worse and worse; the "Wii" generation is abysmal down to every detail (horrible graphics, horrendous design according to any measure you could apply, even clunkier and more awkward to control than the retro stages, zero redeeming qualities). I still fire up the game to play the retro levels, but they completely screwed up the 3D parts.

So, in summary, the 2D parts certainly deserve some praise and reward replay to a certain extent, but the 3D sections are so unbelievably terrible that the parties responsible for that portion of the game should be fired and blacklisted from any future job even remotely related to gaming.

The thing is though that it obviously DOES hurt gameplay for many people, otherwise we wouldn't see it complained about so often.

There's enough to like about the game that I wish it no ill-will, but there are so many irritating or head-scratching design choices that I can't in good conscience say I like it, either.

So untrue...

The complaints about dead-ends thing I don't get. Lots of early maze games had them -- Adventure anyone?

I do hate the 3D levels, but the easy solution is just not to play them (thank you B-Plus for allowing us to play the levels we like!). Warp mode is pretty cool actually and a clever addition. I don't know if further modes are unlockable or not though...

Thanks for the responses, guys. I'm glad I could stimulate some friendly discussion about this game. To comment on a few points made here:

I agree, like I said in my review, I think they make the experience more authentic and require a great deal of skill to successfully navigate.

Local high scores increase the replay value and force you to get better at the game in order to beat them. The Bplus forums have leaderboards if you're really interested in that kind of thing, although I agree that it would've been great to see that feature in the game itself.

The 3D levels certainly are a different experience from the 2D ones, in both the level design and aesthetic appearance. I'll admit that the bright colors of the 64-bit generation hurt my eyes a bit, but I think they accurately reflected what game design was like at the time.

By the same logic, the 80's were pointless.

Bplus isn't good enough at development to add in online modes. (They're only 3 people.)

Also, the 3D modes are fine by me. I see nothing wrong with them. I don't even have problems with the camera in 128-bit mode. And, the graphics for 128-bit are really good. Pardon me if I sound like a graphics whore, but Bplus is talented in that area. I don't understand why people hate the graphics, or the games, for that matter, that Bplus made.

To be honest I think it's a pretty poor game; I played through it once then forgot about it. It's not that there's anything particularly bad about it, there's just nothing particularly good about it either. 500 points I now wish I'd spent on something else.

I actually liked the 3d ones.

So should I get this? I thought it looked mediocre. I'll be getting a pts. card tomorrow, and I'm looking for suggestions (I don't have any games downloaded).

No I don't think the 80s were pointless. I mean think about how exciting it was to get the high score in Pac Man at your local arcade, knowing you've beaten everyone else who has stepped into that arcade. Online leaderboards would have the same effect.

But I do understand that BPlus is too small to pull this off. And I understand you can post your high scores on the BPlus forums as well.

It would just make things a lot simpler to have online, because you wouldn't have to take a picture and upload it to prove you achieved the score. The online leaderboard would just download your score.

But if you're just playing against a certain forum, you're limiting your competition. Who knows if someone has done better without posting it on a forum?

Again though I completely understand BPlus is too small to do this, I just think if they ever did expand a bit, it would help their games.