For this week's Demo Play Thursday i played the Nintendo Switch game BAKERU, from the developers Good-Feel.
There had been a lot of positive buzz about this game and i was keen to play it. it had been compared to the PS1 and N64 platformers and that's an era i grew up in, playing games like Croc.
It's clear that this is a purpose made demo. i wouldn't be surprised if this was used by video game outlets for their preview coverage. there are 5 different things that we can do in this demo and we did them all in this video.
I started with the video that gave the basic story and what we're going to do. it's fun, but there's no gameplay there. the second part was the "Easy" Tokushima stage. this serves as a tutorial of the game controls and some basic concepts. what caught my attention was how good it all looked. the music was fun, and not a stereotype of Japanese music, and the controls felt responsive. it's difficult to say if this is how the tutorial will work in the final game, but what we have in this demo is maybe a little too basic. many games offer small video clips of gifs to help show some concepts in action. that's not the case here.
The next stage i tried was in Osaka and this was a giant robot vs. giant robot in a city sized ring fighting stage. the combat was fun, it continued to look and play great, but the balance felt a little off. i was beating the enemy robot comfortably and then unexpectedly it got good and made it a harder fight than it had been previously. Next is a shoot'em up stage but not in the traditional side scroller style, whether that's vertical or horizontal. this time it was in the style of Space Harrier! i didn't feel that this was that successful as it was surprisingly difficult to judge where the enemy was in a 3D space. but it was still cool to play and like the rest of the game it was a great looking experience.
The final stage i tried was the "Normal" Aichi stage. this was very different from the Tokushima stage as whilst that was in an open environment, the Aichi stage took place in a city environment. i could also feel the change in difficulty, too. i'm a little concerned that stage difficulty might be something that we ourselves can't change and that some stages will just be harder than others. in a game that felt like it was trying to be as accessible as possible, it would be a weird choice to gate keep the game's story due to the players ability.
This demo for BAKERU is great. choosing to showcase 5 different elements of the game is smart, but it's also smart that it clearly shows that there are still others not yet seen. i would've liked a little more story, but that's not the point of this demo. after playing this demo, i can say that BAKERU is well worth wish listing. it's impressive that this late into the Switch's life cycle a new game can come along and be this good.
