SUPER CRUSH KO Review: Combos and Colors Galore!
It is just the beginning of the year, and I already have a game that I don’t want to put down. Super Crush KO is a wonderful blend of a few games, concepts and great style. But, enough with the silly opening and introductory words, let’s talk about why Vertex Pop’s new side scrolling game is a good sign of things to come this year.
The best way to describe this game would be to call it a 2D Devil May Cry. You play as a young woman whose cat is stolen by some alien woman with a robot army. The protagonist puts her hair in a ponytail, grabs an alien gun and goes all John Wick on this army that stands between her and her cat. This is a delightfully and purposefully light hearted tale with bright pinks, blues and oranges filling the screen while being fully aware and basking in the fun and craziness all around. Cutscenes are wonderfully drawn and show a lot of personality in their simple, comic-book styled delivery. The actual gameplay is filled with Karen (our protagonist) leaping, shooting, punching and dashing her way through the mecha armada. The in game character models and enemies are simple, almost like Flash based character models, but they express a lot of energy and personality through subtle and specific animations and fluid motion.
But this game doesn’t just charm the eyes, it feels really great to play. I mostly played on the Switch’s handheld mode, which I found to be best. The controls felt very tight and smooth on it, making my gaming experience very intimate, me versus the world with nothing but my own skills. This game isn’t easy, especially after the 3rd world, it gets tough, but I love that, I loved having to play better, learn skills and juggle different abilities and moves to keep myself alive and defeat enemies. It works just fine docked and i would assume the PC version is just as good as the Switch version. The reason why I mainly compared this game to the Devil May Cry series is because of the grading system. Once a player starts to beat up a few people and get a combo/string together, a grade will appear and keep increasing as the player kills more enemies, doesn’t get hit and uses a variety of moves. This grading system kept me wanting to move quickly, proficient and carefully through the game. I could see people saying that they get tired of fighting enemies again and again, but if that is your complaint, why bother with a game like this? People could complain that the graphics are lazy, or that the game isn’t long enough. I would say they are wrong, a game is meant to give players an entertaining and interesting experience, and Vertex Pop delivers on a good length story and enough variety in attacks and enemies that gameplay never gets stale.
This was a great way to start the year. I am so happy to see indie developers make awesome games that push players to their limits and hold key, core game mechanics at the center of the title. I highly recommend this game, it is a lot of fun and a great game overall. Yeah, maybe some customization in the character or a more filled out story with greater depth could have been put in here, but I love the adventure, the gameplay and the style of it now. It really is a wonderful little gem of gaming to start out the year.
