Written by James Nicolay
Title: 88 Heroes: 98 Heroes Edition
Developer: Bitmap Bureau
Publisher: Rising Star Games
Genre: Action, Platformer
Price: $29.95
88 Heroes: 98 Heroes Edition can be a polarizing experience: the first fifteen minutes (or roughly the first walkthrough) was the best—once you get over the humorous aspects, the game’s weaknesses appear: the overall design is unbalanced and the major feature of the game of playing 88 characters randomly become a thing of annoyance than deep strategizing. And for an indie game that costs almsot $30 on the Nintendo Switch, more refinement shoud’ve been expected and what we get is a whimsical yet, possibly, forgettable game.
The basic premise of the game is that you have to traverse each of the 88 levels from point A to point B in 88 seconds. At the same time, you are given only 88 minutes to finish everything.
The 16-bit design looks charming—oddly, though, the entire level is framed within a screen where Dr. H8 is watching the heroes go within each level full of traps: lasers, spikes, enemies, etc. Dr. H8 rejoices each time your hero die, and every time a level is cleared, you’re reminded of which hero died, how many heroes you have left, and how much time and levels are left to explore. You can also collect coins within the game, and gathering 88 coins will allow you to revive one character.
There are four design shifts across the 88 levels every after 22nd floor, where you will also have to defeat a boss. Everything else feels repetitive at some point. Part of me wishes that the levels could be roguelike (randomly generated), but that might already be chaotic as every level begins with a random hero.
Besides the already established humor of the game, the 88 heroes are the real star, each of them equipped with their own sets of abilities and limitations. The byline of the game goes (and I paraphrase) “we called the best, but they’re not available…” and so we stuck with very flawed video game characters—many of them charming and funny, a few are beyond horrible, though.
Eight stand out heroes to me are (in alphabetical order): Bat Bot, which is to me, the best hero as his movement slows down all the other characters in the game; Double Oh 88, an obvious James Bond-like character holding martini (probably shaken, not stirred); Dr. Schitzo, a madman who randomly fires helpful weapons or totally useless stuff; Harley Trotter, a tall basketball player that dribbles a ball and uses it as weapon (I wish he could jump higher, though); Laser Kittie, cat with laserbeams (definitely, my second favorite hero haha); Madame Missile, who transforms her entire body into weapon and launches herself to the enemies; Miss Fortune, who flips a coin and could either explode instantly or transports you to the exit of the level; and Rick Roll, who will definitely will never give you up.
There is a separate mode in 88 Heroes where you can choose only 8 characters to go through the entire 88 levels. And you can even train the heroes that you like. I feel that this is a better mode to play because it makes you strategize better rather than randomly getting a hero and getting confused with the hero’s ability or annoying disabilities. With platforming, precision is extremely important—thus, having complete mastery of each hero is vital in finishing the game. The default 88 Hero mode, though, makes one go through the entire 88 levels with random hero, and if you lose all 88 heroes in your first playthrough, you would be stuck with one hero to finish the remaining 88 levels, which really feels like an oversight. It would’ve been better if the 88 heroes would be revived but still the timer of the 88 total minutes would be kept.
Probably, what makes this game not quite have a lasting appeal is that none of the characters is special enough to be the face or the icon of the 88 Heroes game. By bombarding the player with 88 heroes, it does feel overwhelming to master them and enjoy the game with the exact precision that the platform levels are designed for.
Overall, I still like the game as I love platformer in general, but what is amiss in 88 Heroes is what sustains many of memorable ones—a real hero that stands out and who would evoke nostalgia like real classic platformer heroes that we love. And a bit of patching the game to balance the difficulty in some areas would also be more than welcome.
Rating: 3.5/5
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