Strider

a real arcade button mash feeling. colorful sparkly effects but the game rewards you for running past as many enemies as possible. most of the game you're spamming X button pretty similar to how Shoot em' up games work, just getting attacks out on the screen watching colorful explosions and enemy deaths. but i dont know, not that exhilarating either. you run around a kind of metroidvania map, theres an arrow showing you where to go, waves of enemies that arent worth stopping & fighting, going to the objective, Boss fight, repeat.
by default you have like 10% health, and the only way to increase it is explore the map and find health upgrades. well I didn't realize that and missed out on almost all of them, so for most of the game i was at 15% health getting pissed and feeling gimped, what an annoying mechanic. it punishes you for not mindlessly covering the dull as fuck generic industrial themed maps, finding upgrades, just to not have to repeat checkpoints 40 times. the game is alright, but the mechanics feel really repetitive and mindnumbing. the bosses are a nice mix, but can be incredibly frustrating when you miss health upgrades.

the controls are OK but sometimes really piss me off. you can jump around and go fast and cling onto walls, but in critical moments you want to just fall off, jump onto X position..but the character frequently just grabs a ledge or does an unnecessary animation, controls can feel imprecise leading to frustration

graphics decent, controls decent, gameplay tolerable to annoying, bosses slightly memorable, maybe the genre just isnt exciting for me right now? the plot is totally forgettable, characters aren't great, gameplay uninteresting mostly Bad and forgettable level design.. overall slightly enjoyable arcade 2D experience..

5.5/10

A good metroidvania, not a great one. I do prefer this one over the original games.

Its very action packed and fast, but the controls are a bit awkward and its possible to get stunlocked to death which is annoying. The jumping is also a bit hard to control.

The visuals are ok, and there isnt really a great amount of variety to the levels besides industrial levels. The setting actually reminds me a lot of Shadow Complex, with its cliche sci fi halls and labs.

Lots of bosses which is cool, but many are complete pushovers. Huge difficulty spike for the last section of the game which completly threw me off. I liked, i just have played much better metroidvanias and this one just doesnt hold up in comparison.