Flourishing an allegiance to two disparate cult-classics is both obstacle and advantage, and rather than work a manageable balance, Strider runs head-first into its history. In a way this is admirable; concessions afforded to modern games can often feel like more of a compromise than an amenity. In Strider’s case, however, it often comes at the cost of identity. Modern Strider is close to old Strider, but it’s even closer to other, better games in its declared genre.
Strider-Hiryu, the titular member of the shadowy Strider organization, quite literally hits the ground running. Less than five seconds after starting the game, Hiryu’s off his glider and on his feet and slicing an ceaseless army of foes inside the faux-Soviet city of Kazakh. This cold open is nice tip-of-the-hat to the days gone by of 8 and 16-bit games, but lacks any sort of consistency in Strider’s proper narrative. While true cut-scenes are kept to a minimum, it seems like Hiryu is constantly being bothered by an endless supply of villains content to mouth-off every couple of minutes. The story is pulpy nonsense ripe of every flavor of ninja imaginable, and that’s perfectly fine, but not when giant orange dialogue boxes repeating inane threats interrupt platforming and combat sequences. It’s damaging at worst and annoying at best.
Combat, on the other hand, remains an area where Strider’s confidence is firmly on display. Hiryu’s Cypher (read: property-shifting plasma blade) is especially adept at slicing cyber soldiers to pieces. While there’s almost certainly some kind of input limitation, the game feels like it’s registering every given command it no matter how fast the button is tapped. This leaves vanquished bad guys in a bath of chaos and destruction as different colored light sheens off their recently-divided corpses. Hiryu’s Cypher eventually amasses other properties, leaving foes either frozen, burning, or boomeranged in its path. As a harmony of side-scrolling action and the resurrection of a style in line with its past, Strider’s swordplay feels right at home in 2014.
At first glance, Hiryu’s surroundings also appear poised to take advantage of his particular set of skills. That ridiculous flipping-jump and penchant for climbing practically anything are well intact, as is an effective, if not too easy, wall-jump ability. Strider also subscribes to the Metroidvania school of design, wherein a giant open-world of interconnected areas make a clear path to progression while simultaneously roping off sections until your powers can unlock them later. A great map that identifies which power is needed to access each location is also handy, and suggests the folks at Double Helix can respect a player’s time.
Metroid and latter-day Castlevania styled games also bear the burden of always keeping the monkey fed. For this style of game to work the player always has to be doing, finding, or fighting something different at constant intervals. For its part, Strider gets some of this right. The upgrade path is well paced, wrapping the game up not long after all of the essential powers are acquired. Combat, however, takes a few too many manic turns to manage any sort of consistency. Hiryu is always fighting someone, however, save a few shielded enemies that demand a certain shade of his Cypher, they’re all fodder chewed through on the way to somewhere else. There’s some challenge to be found, sure, but mowing down hoards of guys drastically outweighs sequences of specific platforming, laser-dodging, or experimental exploration. When Strider doesn’t know what to do, it defaults combat and hopes you’re OK with it.
This failure of pacing is most evident in Strider’s frequent boss encounters. The idea of a game filled with boss battles is enticing, especially in the challenge-light 2014 climate. The reality of Strider is they’re either spread too thin and or discordant with any acquired skill-set. Two thirds of the bosses have a penchant for the elusive dive-kick move, and a couple issue massive difficulty spikes inconsistent with the rest of the game. Depending on your luck you might be able to spam the fire Cypher away and remove a boss with ease, or endure some sort of endlessly stun-locked hell until your life bar melts away. It gives credence to the thought that quantity is admirable, but never a substitute for absolute quality.
Strider’s blade is its identity. While this leaves a signature on combat, it doesn’t aid movement around his world. The Eagle and Panther powers make for flashy upgrades with neat, if not minimal, combat implementation, but functionally they serve an identical purpose; warp Hiryu from A to B. Strider also boasts a hefty bag of tricks, but none that haven’t been seen before in other games. Gravity spheres, laser-dodging falls, patterned jumps, and on-coming wall death races have all been done before. Shadow Complex reintroduced the Metroidvania formula for a modern audience. Outland offered an odd sense of serenity amidst its world-shifting focus. Guacamelee blasted surreal Mexican folklore and humor at every instance. Strider feels like Strider super-sized for a modern world, leaving his beloved-blade as a pogo stick to bounce around well-executed, but ultimately stale ideas.
Even Strider’s presentation feels trapped between obligation and imagination. The depth of the backgrounds often betray the limited budget around which Strider was constructed, especially when said backdrops feature suggestions of urban life around Kazakh City or functioning solider-clone factories. There’s some really cool stuff to consider, and it easily speaks louder than anything from Strider’s blatant narrative. The issue is that, much like the rest of the game, areas that are supposed to be divergent in nature run together as one huge mash of a world. Kazakh City is composed of different pockets of life, but in an endless sea of neon-lit metal-on-metal you’d be hard pressed to tell any of them apart. At the very least, the music is always great. Tracks either feel directly lifted and updated from Strider’s past or like they could have been lifted and updated from Strider’s past.
From a purely technical perspective, Strider does a bang-up job performing on Xbox 360. Ordinarily this wouldn’t merit a discussion in a review (you expect games to function as intended) but in light of Xbox One and PlayStation 4 offerings of the same game, a comparison is necessary. The folks at Digital Foundry listed next-generation versions of the game running at 1080p and sixty-frames-per-second, leaving current-generation at 720p and thirty-fps, respectively. If you have a newer console then Strider is the preferred platform, but PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 aren’t bad as long as you never see it in motion on newer consoles first.
