I could never finish that one.  The final level was insane.

Yeah I got it for PC (Internet slowed as a result), and beat the first level. I am surprised and not surprised by how much I like this game.

After my Ducktails exp, no surprise, but you know, traditionally I;ve not gotten into these kinds of games.

So far, easy GOTY, but I have not played much released in this year.

This game is AWESOME!!!!!!!! Absolutely feels like a long lost NES game which is hard cause stuff like Mega Man 9 was based on an NES game, its much harder to make one from scratch. It is original and yet feels like it would have been a famous franchise if it came out back in the day.

Even though it is NES graphics it has SNES level background effects and looks great in HD. It plays like a dream, perfect jumping, perfect controls. The music is fantastic. The level design is taken from Mega Man but the action is a mix of different NES franchises, you will see influences from many. It has some fantastic level design so far, you know that same level of variety the best Mega Man games have where each level has a new theme and traps to avoid. New relics mean you get new powers one of which gets used in part of the platforming, the phasing. The secrets are well done and it always feels special when you find them.

The only issue, its easy. I guess you can say if Mega Man had checkpoints it would be easy too, perhaps but there has been little resistance from the enemies and nothing as devious as the platforming challenges in that game. That maybe a big plus for some though, as it isn't bullshit, you can get through this and enjoy it.

I am loving it, such a gem of a game. It is fleshed out, it doesn't feel like one of those indie games that had one gameplay idea and that is all the 2-3 hour game is. No this feels like it can be an entire franchise. Great game.

Jake Kauffman (of Mighty Switch Force fame) wrote the music!  Which is another great thing about this game.

http://virt.bandcamp.com/

robio said:

I am kind of surprised to see you playing this Vader. I know in the past you have considered 8 bit games to be nearly unplayable. Cool to see that you give this one a chance.

I think you mean GG.

Finished and started new game +! The final few worlds ramp up the challenge nicely offering some devious platforming challenges. Quite a few times I wanted to throw the wii pad into the wall so the game was doing something right. The combat was still way too easy, the bosses in particular are almost all push overs. This became incredibly apparent in the super easy boss guantlet. Though that gave you max health after each boss. New game + seems to have no health in any level and you take more damage, so now the combat aspect feels like a challenge.

This game is an absolute gem. Took me nearly 6 hours to finish the first time. I wouldn't say it ranks up there with the best mega man games, its missing a bit of the expert level design those games had, I felt Shovel Knight wanted to go there but held back so that people didnt get frustrated. But this is easily the indie game of the year so far, I doubt anything will top it.

robio said:

You know why I like Shovel Knight? When I was a kid in the NES era, my friends and I would try to come up with ideas for our own games. They were terrible ideas, but we loved them and wrote them down in a notebook just in case some random Japanese developer came up to us and asked us for an idea.  This game feels like one of those stupid ideas. I can very easily have seen the conversation going like, "Okay there's a knight, but he fights with a shovel, and sometimes he'll go fishing. And it'll be like we cross Mega Man with Super Mario 3." And then that idea was held onto for years until someone came around and figured out a way for it to be work and be brilliant.

This, so this.

"Prepare to face justice... Shovel Justice"

It's been announced that Shovel Knight has an unlockable mode called "Butt Mode." You type in a certain name and the words like "shovel" "Knight" "magic" and several others all get replaced with the word "butt." So the sentence, "Shovel Knight drank a potion to restore his magic." would appear as "Butt butt drank a potion to restore his butt."  Needless to say, this is humor at its finest. It does however make me wonder something though.

When I was a kid there were two obnoxious brothers that lived next door to me. Spoiled little bastards. When one had a birthday, the other would get a present so he wouldn't feel bad. Anyway they liked to pretend to be the Super Mario Brothers and played around the neighborhood as them. Thing is, if a third kid was involved they invented a third Mario brother for him to be. The third Mario brother was Butt Butt. So when I see how this code works, it kind of makes me wonder if one of these two kids didn't go into game development years later.

robio said:

It's been announced that Shovel Knight has an unlockable mode called "Butt Mode." You type in a certain name and the words like "shovel" "Knight" "magic" and several others all get replaced with the word "butt." So the sentence, "Shovel Knight drank a potion to restore his magic." would appear as "Butt butt drank a potion to restore his butt."  Needless to say, this is humor at its finest. It does however make me wonder something though.

When I was a kid there were two obnoxious brothers that lived next door to me. Spoiled little bastards. When one had a birthday, the other would get a present so he wouldn't feel bad. Anyway they liked to pretend to be the Super Mario Brothers and played around the neighborhood as them. Thing is, if a third kid was involved they invented a third Mario brother for him to be. The third Mario brother was Butt Butt. So when I see how this code works, it kind of makes me wonder if one of these two kids didn't go into game development years later.

So this begs the question: If they lived next door to you and you were all kids, it would lead to the assumption that you would have to play together sometimes. If, then, they were the Mario Bros. would that make --YOU-- Butt Butt on occasion? I need to know this information now as it puts you into an entirely different light in my mind!