In case you think I’m over exaggerating, on one particular level it took me almost twenty minutes to figure out how to get past a single progression of jumps. This game is not for the fate hearted in fact, Dustforce is by far the hardest game I’ve ever played – sorry Dark Souls. This leads to whole sections of impossible looking jumps where you’ll have to figure out the exact combination of dash, jump, double jump and attacks that will give you just enough momentum to make it across unscathed.Īs every new level gets unlocked it gets increasingly harder to progress through to the end of each infuriatingly difficult stage. While combat in platformers isn’t new, Dustforce only lets you jump a third time after defeating an enemy. Armed with two types of attack, cleaning up dirt and combining attacks fills up your combo meter which results in you releasing an incredibly powerful super attack. Instead of the gameplay focusing on speed and reaction time, Dustforce revels in making platforming a slow and deliberate fare. This is also one of the rare platformers to put a heavy emphasis on momentum and combat rather than just quick reactions. The game utilizes this mechanic brilliantly, often placing dirt on the side of a death-defying drop and daring you to try and slide down toward it – all in the hope that you’ll clean enough of the level to achieve that life-affirming S rating. Where Dustforce differentiates itself from other games in the genre, is in the characters’ ninja-like ability to briefly slide down and across walls. Each level sees you following a trail of dirt as you run, jump and slide your way across them cleaning everything in your path. Like most good platformers, the story here is minimal and essentially just serves as a background to set up the game’s core mechanics. The game sees them hopping from locale to locale, cleaning everything from dust, to fog to slime and taking on whatever (presumably) dirty enemies they face. The game revolves around a team of four cleaners called – you guessed it – the Dustforce. Then, half an hour later, it bludgeons you with its difficulty curve and you realize how inferior your skills really are. Initially the game is quite gentle with you, easing you in with a nice tutorial and some relatively simple opening levels – until it lulls you into thinking you’ve mastered the basic mechanics. Taking its cues from sadomasochistic platformers like Super Meat Boy, Dustforce demands nothing less than pinpoint precision and perfect timing from the player at all times. For every multi-billion dollar action game that holds your hand and goes out of its way to make you feel like a gaming badass, there is a 2D platformer made by four people that will come along and put you firmly back in your place.ĭustforce was originally released on Steam in 2012 to great critical reception, and has since gained a respectable enough following for Capcom (of all people) to decide to publish it on PS3, 360 and Vita – which is nothing short of a fairy tale-esque triumph for developers Hitbox, especially when you consider what type of game this is. The fact that games like Dustforce exist reaffirms what I love about this industry.
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