(Shovel Knight isn't in the Video Game Room.... >.< I'll just post it here)

One day, I was looking through some amazing recently released games. One that got my eye was Shovel Knight. It caught my eye
because, it was a retro platformer. Most games just make their graphics 8 – 16 bit to get nostalgia hungry gamers to waste $10 on a horrible game. This game is so different than the other indie retro games, not by nostalgia, but by giving a modern spin on old gameplay. Come with me as up dig up this masterpiece. (I’m so sorry, I’ll try to keep puns to a minimum.)
Graphics: 9/10 This game is a 2D action platformer. Now, I heard about this game, and I thought it was one of those games that wanted to make gamers from the 80s and 90s buy it just for nostalgia and make it really bad. In terms of graphics, this is an 8/16 bit platformer. All the
sprites look great; every character model looks exactly as it is in the artwork, but it still keeps the 8-bit flare to make it retro. The backgrounds
look gorgeous and even the color pallet is of the NES’s. One thing wrong with the graphics, though is the fact is that it uses parallax scrolling. If you didn’t know, parallax scrolling is when the foreground moves faster than the background. The NES was incapable of this, so I can’t give the graphics a perfect score if the game doesn’t stay true to the console it was inspired by. (I know parallax scrolling makes it look better, but…. minus 20 points from Gryffindor, TIME FOR THE STORY)

Story: 10/10 The game begins with a beautiful NES style cutscene (ala Megaman 10, even though it was on Wiiware.) Two adventurers,
Shovel Knight and Shield Knight, roamed the untamed land going on adventures. They had wealth, fame, wealth, and WEALTH. Their adventures suddenly stopped when they came to the Tower of Fate, where the two fall to the dark magic of a cursed amulet. When Shovel Knight awakened, he found that Shield Knight was nowhere to be seen and the tower was sealed. Grieving for his lost partner, Shovel Knight went into a life of solitude. That is, until a dark magician name the Enchantress opened up the Tower of Fate and sent out her eight evil knights under her, the Order of No Quarter, to subdue the population. Now, seeing the chance to find Shield Knight, Shovel Knight grabs his shovel and embarks on an epic quest, fighting all of the Order of No Quarter and eventually reaching the Tower of Fate. Wow. NES styled games usually have a simple story, like “Yo dude, are you bad enough to save the president?”, but this is some deep stuff. I won’t ruin the ending, but it’s kinda obvious once you reach almost halfway.

Sound: 10/10 This game has amazing music. One of the best 8-bit soundtracks I’ve ever heard IN MY LIFE. Every song is catchy and fits the stage well. I had the main theme stuck in my head to this very day! (I bought Shovel Knight 3 weeks ago).

Depth: 9/10 There is, frankly, not a lot to do in Shovel Knight. There are 8 main bosses, and you can battle them in any order (there are limitations, however. You can fight the any of the first 2 bosses, than 3 more bosses are given to you.) There are some ministages which revolve around using a certain relic you obtain. I wish there were more of them, those stages were amazing (and sadly unreplayable.) There are 4 roaming bosses on the map, ala Super Mario Bros 3 that you can challenge. After you beat the main story, new game plus is now available. This mode is where all the food items are exchanged for bombs, and there are a lot less checkpoints (like a stage with normally 6-8 checkpoints now has 2). This really felt more like one of the NES hardcore games (like Castlevania).

Addictiveness: 9/10 This game really had me strapped on for the ride, and it didn’t want me to leave. I kept coming back to stages I failed in the past and learned all the platforming puzzles and beat the evil knights. The biggest reason I wanted to finish this game is to find out what
happened to Shield Knight (even though it was obvious).

Difficulty: 9/10 This game, at first, is not very hard. There are plenty of checkpoints that will take you back after you die, but the is a sort of risk/reward system in this game. You can break the checkpoint to get more gold, but the checkpoint is permanently destroyed for the remainder of the level. I actually liked this concept, and I wish more games can somehow incorporate this more often. Oh, and new game plus mode is hard. Like, really hard.

Overall: 9.3/10 This game is amazing, from the gameplay, to the story, and to almost every aspect of it, but it’s not perfect. Sometimes the levels were infuriatingly difficult that I would never want to play the game again (looks at Polar Knight’s stage) but, I can overlook those
flaws and recommend this to anyone and everyone who likes 2D action platformers.

(Note: I used the 3DS version for the review of this game. This is an unpaid review)

alsonic : Good work on the review man I saw a few video for this and the ads and it looked pretty cool to me. I feel that you could have put a bit more in the music section but everything else was done nicely

Good work on the review. Like deg said, try adding a bit more to the music section, and it should be a very solid and nice review. Keep up the good work!