As I first saw Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon, I thought I misremembered. Bloodstained had... graphics. Real graphics, not the 8-bit era graphics I was seeing here. Well, luckily I was right. Curse of the Moon is a short game made as a stretch goal reward of the Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night (which I will get around to eventually) Kickstarter, and I had added them both to my backlog as they came out.
Now, I can't say I have any nostalgia for the gaming of the 80s or 90s (possibly because I wasn't alive for most of that time, and was definitely not playing video games), or even that of 10 years past. I think games are becoming better and better thanks to advances in technology, mainly processsing power and tools, but also the amount of resources people put into game developent as a non-niche entertainment branch, and I'm happy to keep playing fresh games. Still, I thought, people are saying it's like an authentic Castlevania knockoff, why not experience it.
It definitely feels true to everything I know about the 8-bit era. From the graphics, to the sounds, to the controls, to how the character is obeying some very weird rules of motion which, under some observation, can be seen as very primitive and simple methods for approximating the physics of (the various parts of) jumping. I've never played (any) Castlevania, but I recognized it, somehow, so make of that what you will.
But ho boy, am I glad I'm not playing these games anymore. Mainly from the aspects of game design and system limitations, we've advanced leaps and bounds. So it's not just the hardware that has gotten better, the developers have too. (That is, if you ignore the lower-end who are producing trash because it's so easy to do these days.)
This devolved into less of a review of the game and more about how games are getting better. Honestly though, that's probably a better topic. This game's short, and has nothing new, literally. If you're getting old and want a childhood nostalgia experience, but for some reason don't want to play one of the actually old games, then, sure, I guess. For everyone else, play something new, from at least the last decade. New games are good, trust me.
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