Jetboy

Genre: Action-Platformer / Arcade

Players: 1

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Review:

Jetboy is an Arcade-style Action-Platformer released on PC in 2021 and ported to Nintendo Switch in 2022. This game presents players with a simple goal – collect four pieces of fuel that appear in each of the game’s relatively small arena-style levels and return them to your rocket ship without getting killed. However, in your way are an assortment of alien enemies you’ll need to fight through to complete this task.

The presentation in Jetboy is a fun mix of retro and modern elements, with simple 2D pixel art visuals that have a variety of effects applied to them, with the result being some stages that look like a classic Game Boy game, and others looking outright psychedelic.This is backed by a pretty solid metal guitar soundtrack that does a great job of keeping up the adrenaline as you fight your way through hordes of enemies.

When it comes to the gameplay here, the core concept is sound, and I can definitely see this making for some fun gameplay. Unfortunately, that fun is undone by one major problem – your movement speed here is absolutely terrible. Both your horizontal and vertical movement is so slow that dodging enemies becomes far more difficult than it should be, and since by default your shots only fire in one direction, aiming to take down enemies is similarly difficult.

As a result, what could have been a fun pseudo-retro-style throwback Arcade-style Action-Platformer becomes a needlessly frustrating experience. And while Jetboy isn’t without its good points, I think most players are better off skipping it.

tl;dr – Jetboy is an Arcade-style Action-Platformer where players must collect fuel and return it to their spaceship. This game has a great presentation with a mix of retro and modern elements. Unfortunately, this presentation is marred by slow movement that makes both fighting and avoiding enemies far more difficult than it should be. While this game isn’t without its charms, most players are better off skipping it.

Grade: C-

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