Valfaris

Genre: Action-Platformer

Players: 1

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Review:

Valfaris is an Action-Platformer set in a world that seems like it was ripped straight out of a heavy metal album cover, with grotesque beasts, ungainly machines, and everything seeming to be dipped in a layer of dirt or rust, and where players play as a musclebound space warrior out for blood against an intergalactic army bent on destroying him.

Visually, this is presented using pixel art with a great level of detail that really sells the world of this game of a hostile grungy dystopia, and there’s some good variety in environments with a surprising amount of color in places given the dark themes. However, all of this detail does at times make it difficult to gauge where your character can traverse. It’s not game-breaking, but it can make for occasional frustrating deaths.

Despite the testosterone-fueled characters in the game, the action in Valfaris is far from mindless, adding strategy into the combat using an energy and shield system that has players timing the use of the shield to deflect shots and doing melee attacks to recharge the shield’s energy. There’s also a clever risk/reward system here in the form of the game’s crystals, which can be used to save progress at checkpoints, or saved until the end of a level to spend on character upgrades.

As for the action itself, it’s pretty good, with a decent variety of enemies, and with plenty of different attacks for players to choose from when confronting them, although there were definitely times that I felt like some enemies made it nearly impossible to avoid taking damage.

Since this game’s release, the developers have added a free “Full Metal Mode”, which adds a New Game+ mode with more difficult enemies, so players wanting to continue this game’s action have even more to dig into.

While I have some nitpicks about Valfaris, overall this is a really solid Action-Platformer that does some interesting and clever things with the genre and delivers it all in a package that looks fantastic. Fans of action-packed platformers who want a fun game in the genre that really feels “metal” would do well to pick this one up.

tl;dr – Valfaris is an Action-Platformer with a great presentation that’s very “metal”. However, under that presentation there are some clever game mechanics and a good amount of variety. While it’s not without its rough edges, overall this is a superb game well worth playing.

Grade: B+

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