Sky Racket and Backpack Hero

Games that embrace the retro pixel art style.

Sky Racket

After randomly getting jet packs and the titular "sky rackets" a pair of kids take flight to fight the WTF enemies which include cat sandwiches and giant bananas in what feels very much like Breakout albeit with horizontal layout instead of vertical. The idea is that you can whack enemy fire (and a few other things) with your sky racket to destroy the blocks and enemies that get in your way. The problem is that after getting used to being able to whack back enemy bullets, you're introduced to enemy bullets that can't be whacked back and soon after get to your first bullet hell type boss, where only 1 out of every 10 of his shots are "returnable". Not recommended.

Backpack Hero

In this game you play as a pack rat going on adventures with a magic backpack that starts out in a 3x3 configuration and gains space as you level up fighting and looting your way through each map. Deciding what to bring with the limited space is only half the battle, as packing things properly gives lots of bonuses. Put this thing beside a weapon makes the weapon more do damage. This thing diagonally beside armor gives more armor. This other thing you want to keep away from weapons but on the top row of the pack for "reasons". Enemies can also "give" you things like goo or fire which will eat up space or disable your gear. 

Cool concept, but two things turned me off it: firstly there are many occasions where there's lots of loot and you have loads of space but you can ONLY pick up 2 things!? And secondly the pack and its contents return to level 1 on your next dungeon run which absolutely sucks. Not recommended.

Blood Dragon - Tasty Retro Goodness!

I've never played FarCry 3 though I've been meaning to - however since I'm very stingy with the moneys I instead went for its cheaper throwback version called Blood Dragon and man is it a blast to play! It takes place in a post apocalyptic future where everything is neon (even the wildlife, because neon = future) and when you have mission objectives like "punch the nuclear reactor", you understand what type of game it is. Michael Beihn does a great job voicing the numerous one liners as the protagonist and there are a ton of places I was laughing my ass off while trying to complete objectives. The old school, lacking in animation cutscenes and questionable plot work well too for those of us who remember the old games that used that and the soundtrack really fits into the theme. The gameplay itself however is not old school at all, it is a polished and well-performing modern first person shooter with many sidequests to keep yourself busy for a few hours.

They shoot lasers out of their eyes!

It isn't perfect though - in my case it didn't like my graphics card meaning every 10 or so minutes it would crash out to desktop. This isn't too bad since you can save the game in most parts... EXCEPT when doing main story missions which uses the checkpoint system (and all checkpoints are wiped on reboot). My usual tactics of being sneaky had to go out the window to compensate for this, meaning I had to rambo my way through each as fast as possible. This brings me to my second problem, and maybe one that's only a problem for me: it's too easy. I was playing on the hardest mode, ramboing through everything (cover? what's cover?) and died maybe 3 times in the whole game. Then again what kind of 80's action movie didn't have an overpowered protagonist anyway? :P

Even with all the sidequests it is a pretty short game, but still definitely worth it for the low price - and I highly recommend trying it out!