Review : Night Slashers X by BonusJz

[fredo46]

First of all : I'll use Damon Caskey's system for reviews (without poll) since I think it's the most relevant. I suppose he won't mind

Night Slashers X by BonusJz
Review Key:

5 - Beyond superb, a new standard has literally been set.
4 - Excellent, certainly the best among any offerings so far.
3 - Of average quality, not bad, but could be better.
2 - Poorly executed, and defiantly needs work.
1 - Shows almost no effort and is a perfect example of what not to do.

Creativity: New ideas, or the 15?th remake of the same game? Are features being used in a new way, or is it the same old punch, punch, grab N? throw?
Execution: Offsets, collision detection, animation and editing.
Presentation: Cut scenes, graphic and sound quality.
Game play: In game mechanics, character moves, enemy stylistics, control.
Overall: The total package, NOT an average.


I think it's a shame there's no review for what is still for me the best Openbor mod ever made, though it's been made in 2008. No offense for others though. The Punisher and Cadillacs and Dinosaurs are for me the two best beat'em ups ever in terms of fun, simplicity, playability and learning curve. Night Slashers X got everything I liked from these two games and even more. The original Night Slashers didn't catch me much, though, but playing it is a good way to see how BonusJz took the best from it.

Creativity - 5: I don't put 5 to be nice with the creator. I don't know him at all. What I love in this game is that you can finish the game with the classic method, if you're patient enough and know how to move your char. By classic I mean making basic combos by pushing attack again and again, along with some basics grabs and throws.
But soon, you'll discover all different moves/grabs/combos you can make with every char, and all of them are easy. Just push up, down or forward while making a combo, it will end differently. Same for grabs, any direction + attack or jump button will make something different so that makes 8 different grabbing combos for each char (and they can be combined !). There's also rising attack, rolling before rising. The block/special button will block almost any attack, you'll even make a counter attack if you block exactly when you get hit. The hit counter makes chaining worth, because you'll win a life every 200000 points and points you earn by chaining are exponential. I managed to make a 100 hit combo once and earned about 350000 points !
There are also two running levels and one secret level. During all 8 stages, difficulty increases regularly, and each stage has more or less its own atmosphere. All in all, there's nothing brand new but I got the feeling that every good aspect from beat'em all history has been put into this game
Last but not least : there are only 4 credits, with 2 lives per credit, that's 8 lives, no more if you don't care about points ! See my conclusion for more info about this AFAIK unique feature in openbor mods.

Execution ? 5: Here also, a new standard has been set. Every offset, collision, animation is perfectly made. Some details will make you scream : combos can cut a zombie in two, sometimes a head of a zombie will fly and hit other baddies ! There are nice cartoonish words (crush !...), the background changes for a few seconds when a boss is killed, light will change in some levels to be more scary. No cheap boss that makes you loose half of your life and you didn't see it come... Music choice is great (there's one of my favorite tracks of all times from Metamorphic force during running level). There are only two problems, one is minor and the other one is an engine bug, I think, that's why I still give a 5 : the ground gets often full of corpses, and you won't be able to find bonuses and weapons, except for the most important life bonuses (meat, soup and sandwich) which have a smoke animation. The other thing is that, quite often, especially when making a big combo, the extra life won't come after 200000 points ! I tested with the latest openbor, problem is still here.

Presentation ? 4: nothing exceptionnal here, but everything is made well. Changes of music before or after a boss are good ; cinematics are kept to a minimum but there's a short dialog before each boss. It's the first mod I've seen where the unnecessary buttons in control options are removed and correctly renamed. The "how to play" section doesn't explain anything but BonusJz posted a video on youtube with some explanations (http://youtu.be/gYxJX5jTBw4). Sprite edits are nice, compared to original game Night Slashers. It's also nice that every corpse stays on the ground, just like in every zombie movie (except for the problem seeing bonuses in the middle of (un)dead bodies).

Game play - 5: I've explained a bit of it in "Creativity" section, I'll develop more here. One thing I love it that it's a 4-button game with a 2-button spirit. I mean you can explore most of the possibilities of the game with only two buttons (attack and jump, of course), later you'll learn how to block and counterattack with the third button. You'll use the taunt button only to carry weapons to next boss and for fun after beating it
Some other great features (just to mention some) :
- the taunt button will make you put weapons on the ground for later use, allowing you to keep them for bosses ;
- you can hit baddies on the ground, from a distance or near them
- you HAVE to hit a baddie once before grabbing him, and though it takes a little while to master this, you'll soon think it's great because this prevents you from beeing blocked by grabbing a baddie when you're surrounded and trying to escape.
- The two special per character (u,d,s or jump, s in mid air) are nice and effective and are different from the escape move (a+j) which every char has, too.
I won't talk much about ennemies, mid-bosses and bosses to let you discover them. There aren't more than 10 types of baddies but every kind has its own attacks, blocks and ways to beat. Same for each boss. There are also two running levels and one secret level. Health and points items are random. Weapons are numerous and used differently : barrel, axe, grenades, shotgun, machine gun, and even chainsaw

Overall ? 5: I'll start my conclusion with a request for every mod developer : please put limited credits in your mods so players get a motivation to play well, earn points and survive ! Limited credits combined with Load/Save game possibility integrated in OpenBor is a great way to train : you can play over and over every level (quit game and reload every time you die too much), and soon the last levels will get as familiar as the first ones. At the beginning, 4 credits seemed far from enough to me to finish the game, now I can beat it with 1 credit and 1 hand
Also, this mod demonstrated (to me) that there's no need for countless playable chars. 2 or 3, each one with its own forces and weaknesses, is enough IMHO.

Ok, the mod isn't in downloads section since the last lavalit hack so I put the UNSECURED version here : http://trollfou.free.fr/ , but bandwidth may be limited on this account so don't blame me if it becomes unaccessible.

I'm not a modder but if one of you modders could solve the extra life issue (is it engine bug or not ?) and visibility of bonuses in the middle of corpses (by pressiong taunt button, for example) this would make this mod perfect.

Thanks for reading !
Fredo46

[utunnels]

I haven't played the original NS game until a couple of days ago.
It is not a quite good game (you hit the zombies as if they are made out of cotton) and this mod surpasses it in every aspect.

[Bloodbane]

 Hanzo HAS made review of this mod long time ago IIRC. Unfortunately, it has been deleted.

 Anyways, for me, this mod is one of best mods we have. Not only sheer number of moves but there are effects which you can see throughout the game which gives extra feeling when playing the mod.

 Unfortunately, the biggest flaw this mod has is lack creativity in character design. I understand if Jake have more slam move but why he and Christopher must have same combo freespecial? why can't they focus on their own specialty instead of repeating same frames in different combo?
 Enemy design is pretty different IIRC but bosses need more work IMO. Most are practically the same and only differ in aggression. Yes, Same, most of them are chasers who prioritize getting close than long range attack. The only unique bosses this mod has are Arremer and Phantom Chopper. ( I forgot the other one!)
 Because of lack of difference, most of them can be defeated with same trick. No, it's not throwing enemies to boss nor running attack spam.
 That reminds me that almost every boss fight has enemy backups. Although I know why, but it would be better if not all have them. Some bosses like King Zarutz, Arremer and Grim Reaper should fight on their own IMO. Even the original Nightslashers don't have all bosses backed up with zombies.

 Well, don't get discouraged from playing this mod, as I said before this is one of the best mods. fredo has said the rest about this mod.
 My own score for this mod is: 4.5

[msmalik681]

i would give this a straight 5 best openbor game i played.

[Hanzo]

I would give it a 4/5 for the fun factor.

[volcanic]

I give it a 5/5.
Edit:
And I hope there will be some Mods better made someday.