'Blast Brigade' Brings '80s Action Flick-Inspired Metroidvania Exploration To Switch

Wanted to get in here to let everyone know- this one is REALLY good. I normally don’t gravitate to this kind of artstyle or super-comedic games but the Steam reviews were glowing so I picked it up. I played it ALL DAY yesterday til Gotta Protectors released later and it’s incredibly good. Tight controls and it just feels super well done all around. I figured a lot of people would write this one off on the looks alone so I thought I’d chime in. Don’t sleep on it!

Bold move to put all those characters from the best Metroidvanias out there in your trailer, reminding us to compare them all.

Looks cool, but I'll hold on to my wallet until I read some reviews. Liked the trailer and all the little details, though.

@GhostGeneration thanks for chiming in on this.. I started the trailer and as soon as I saw the art style, I closed it within 3-4 seconds.
I’ll give it another view shortly and maybe check it out because a good metroidvania is good regardless.

@ChromaticDracula No worries, I’m ALWAYS stoked to give a dark horse a chance! Seriously, I saw the thumbnail on the eShop and did my usual “looks like a mobile game” eye roll BUT- looking past that allows some pretty great mechanics to get their hooks in, and the exploration and writing is really damn good too. If you think of it, hit me back on this thread and let me know what you think of it!

Already played their previous games on ios, bombastic brothers, it's a really good 2D contra-like games although it's a free ios game, I'm really disappointed when it's gone on ios store.

But this game looks like their previous games without all the BS mtx, I'm definitely getting this on switch 😃

@Zverik The game steam reviews are very positive, so it seems the game is good. I'll wait for nintendolife review first before buying it on switch just to make sure.

The gameplay is like Johnny Bazookatone (Saturn). I loved that game.

And here you can change the characters mid game.

Love it!

I've been playing almost nothing but metroidvanias this year, and this one has big 6/10 vibes.

This looks interesting I may have to check this out. However my backlog just keeps getting bigger and bigger

@Wurstsemmel753 Yeah I've noticed that too. There's something very back and forth about that in any forms of entertainment nowadays. Meaning typically the pitchfork & torch mobs go nuts when stereotypes are utilized however when they're used in certain ways (like this example) it's ok because it's done "correctly". It's like any Hispanic character wears a sombrero and/or poncho and a Asian character knows martial arts Ah well whatever works I'm down with it all

Thank you so much for the HD clear artstyle. I'm so tired of the pixelated style, particularly anything pre 16 bit graphics.

Sounds like fun

It doesn't look like anything special. Nothing really compelling. That trailer felt too try hard.

Oh wow, a metroidvania? That's good that some devs are giving some love to this completely underrated genre. There's basically no metroidvanias for switch as it is right now. There's even fewer metroidvanias than there are kart racer games. We may never get a mario kart, but at least we have this one metroidvania

OK but seriously, I'm sure it's a good game. But I'm tired of every game being a metroidvania, because they can't be bothered to do actual good level design, which is a necessity for a good 2D platformer. The best part of Mario and sonic is the level design, that for each series is built entirely around the character you play as, which is why it's not that fun to put sonic in a mario game, or mario in a sonic game (and people have done that, made romhacks). But a ton of indie developers don't have the time or money to do that, so they make a metroidvania instead, where people will eat up terrible level design and will love it and ask for seconds, because it's "realistic" or "immersive". The reason super metroid is still the best one ever is because the level design on it was so utterly perfect. And too many devs just pay no attention to the level design because they know people will buy the games anyway just because of what genre it is. I'm not saying that this is what happened here, but a lot of devs just make metroidvanias out of laziness.

This is probably a good game but I just can't see why people would buy this over every other one that's already available. If they've already played and beaten metroid dread and hollow Knight etc in the last few years, then anything will be a step down in quality. And of course the new hollow Knight sequel is supposed to be coming out "soon". And there's now Axiom Verge 2 that's already out for PS5, and will be on the switch soon. Honestly the first one was surprisingly the most original metroidvania I've played in decades, despite it clearly being a homage to metroid. All the weapons and upgrades and abilities etc are unique, invented for that game, instead of the same old tired items and weapons that every single metroidvania seems to have. So Axiom Verge brought back that level of excitement and discovery that we used to get before we played super metroid which changed the genre forever. Nobody knew what kind of weapons and items Samus could get. Axiom Verge is the same, and so I'm sure the sequel is just as good.
Or Blasphemous. That's a fantastic metroidvania. Bloodstained is also good now, it seems to run fine on switch now, albeit it should never have been released in that state in the first place.

Etc etc. This one looks too much like it's copying Guacamelee a bit too much. It's not a deal breaker but I hate those newgrounds flash animation style graphics, they always look bad. Maybe that's just because I'm an old man, and all the young folk of today love this style, because they never lived through the newgrounds era.

@AnorakJimi We also played those games for free on newgrounds. So there's that.