Join Donatello, Leonardo, Michelangelo, and Raphael in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Cowabunga Collection. Presumably, that’s due to the computer’s resources being taken up by generating the level you’re about to die in. At least it generally runs well otherwise (as you’d expect from a game that looks like it’s fresh out of the ‘90s) aside from some jittery framerates when taking the chutes to the next stages or choosing your weapons at the very beginning. As if these intentional design decisions weren't enough of a kick in the teeth, sometimes I'd have to restart because I got inexplicably (and inextricably) stuck on the geometry of enemy bodies or shot dead by an enemy firing straight through a locked door. (But of course, this style of game is meant to be beaten only by the most practiced of players.) The randomization keeps the experience of restarting again and again fresh, yes, but somehow it's never quite so rewarding as learning the secrets of deliberately designed levels like you find in id’s old (or new, for that matter) shooters. It took many hours just to clear the first of four zones – and I’ve yet to get further than the third. And sometimes even then I'd get stuck in seemingly no-win situations like the elevator one described above, where I'd end up in a rough spot and die no matter how many precautions I took. Rather than running through levels as I would in Quake, the severe paranoia left me creeping through each level, sneakily luring enemies into chokepoints and sniping them from afar when I could. “I can't help but feel decisions like this ruin the gameplay that Strafe seems to be aiming for. I’d have been fine with no vending machine at all, but putting them where I can see them but not reach them is just rubbing salt in the wound. Worse, one of the most important elements is a vending machine that lets you buy armor or extra ammo for piles of scrap dropped from enemies, and often these get placed right underneath acid-spewing turrets that are sometimes impossible to avoid. For example, because of the ancient-looking art style and its intentionally blocky textures, sometimes it's hard to make out the elevating platforms from the surrounding walls, making me wonder for a bit if Strafe had created a level that's impossible to escape. You start off by choosing a permanent one – a shotgun, a laser gun, or a machine gun – but I had the most fun when picking up the rocket launchers, nail guns, pistols, and other firearms scattered about the entrail-splattered floors and emptying their limited ammo before switching back to the defaults.The trouble began when I started to notice I was being led astray too often. It helps that Strafe’s gunplay usually satisfies, even though the guns always feel like they would benefit from a bit more "oomph" or originality. It bleeds '90s personality and nails so much about the early shooter experience while mixing it with today's craze for roguelike-style procedural generation and single-life runs, but too often it shoots itself in the foot with its unfair randomization, miserly access to armor and ammo boosts, and some lethal bugs. Back to the beginning.That's been my experience for much of Strafe.
And that's why I howl in rage when I take an elevator down and get instantly slaughtered by swarms of enemies from both behind and in front when I arrive at the bottom.
I know now that death in Strafe comes far more easily than it ever did in id's landmark first-person shooter, and this is the first time in hours I've made it so far without taking much damage.
And yet here I am, three stages in, carefully and methodically picking off charging Gluttons and waist-high robots who aim annoyingly well. I felt it pushing me to blaze through its levels as quickly as I used to race through the original Quake in 1996, and I'd love nothing more than to oblige.