6/12/2023 0 Comments Shovel knight treasure trove hacks![]() ![]() ![]() It won’t take you too long to get to this point, mind. It’s a perfectly balanced system, designed to ensure you’re still trying out new techniques by the time the credits roll and you’re ready to start the New Game+ option. These range from (literally) throwaway ones like an axe you can chuck in an arc, to genuinely useful ones like the Phase Locket which makes you briefly invincible.īy slowly acquiring these powers one at a time, you never feel overwhelmed and get a chance to experiment with each of them before taking on the next. There are also ‘relics’, which are new powers you gain throughout the game in order to keep things fresh. What can you bounce off to reach that chest? If you use that flying enemy as a step to get across that pit, how will you get back? That wall up there looks breakable: is it worth trying to reach it and risk taking damage?īy constantly keeping your mind active and ensuring you’re continually thinking of different ways to use the limited skills available to you, this ensures the game never slips into the repetitive jump-fest so many other retro-style platformers become. So far so normal, but what makes the game such a joy to play is the way each level is designed to push each of your abilities without ever doing it in a frustrating way.Įach screen offers a different platforming puzzle (albeit a basic one, don’t get too worried). Your downward thrust jump, meanwhile, harks back to DuckTales’ pogo stick attack and with a bit of skill you can use it to bop multiple enemies or bounce off them to reach higher platforms. Your standard swing has good range and either sends small enemies flying or does good damage to bigger ones. Each of Shovel Knight’s moves is designed to make you feel like a complete badass: the guy wields a shovel better than most pricks brandish a sword. The important thing is that the plot, basic though it may be, gives you the perfect excuse to head out, shovel in hand, and get thwacking.ĭoing this is so satisfying. It’s a pretty generic story, then, but 2D platformers from the ‘80s weren’t exactly Tolstoy yarns (and if the ‘rescue the woman’ story annoys you, you can now change the gender of Shovel Knight, Shield Knight or both). ![]() It’s up to you, then, to defeat all eight robot masters knights and make your way to the Enchantress so you can try to rescue Shield Knight. She’s been captured by the evil Enchantress, who’s dispatched a bunch of other knights (known as the Order of No Quarter) to go and smack the piss out of Sir Shovel. You play as the titular Shovel Knight, who’s on a quest to rescue his friend Shield Knight. It plays like those three games, is what I’m trying to say. If you’re new to it, Shovel Knight is what you’d get if NES titles DuckTales, Mega Man and Zelda II: The Adventure Of Link all donated sperm and somehow were able to merge it to make one big super-sperm, which was then fused with a egg which represents… I dunno. You can most definitely add Shovel Knight to this list. Games like Super Meat Boy, Retro City Rampage and VVVVVV combine retro visuals with genuinely compelling gameplay to earn their price tag and appeal to gamers of all vintages. Most of these are all retro style and no substance, the product of an indie developer whose lack of creativity when choosing an art style is inevitably accompanied by a lack of creativity in terms of gameplay mechanics.Įvery now and then, though, you’ll get a game which does actually offer more than a brief “come see how old I look, ha ha!” message. Much like the early 2000s were flooded with games with flat textures and people going “ooooh, it looks just like a cartoon (except not quite)”, today we’re flooded with games with basic sprite-based graphics and people going “ooooh, it looks just like an NES game (except not quite)”. Switch, Wii U, 3DS, PS4, PS3, Xbox One, Vita, Steam (Switch version reviewed)įake 8-bit graphics are this generation’s cel-shading. For those who have and just want to know what’s new in the Switch version, scroll down to the ‘Treasure Trove features’ section further down the article. The first part of this review is aimed at those who have never played the original standalone version of Shovel Knight before. ![]()
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