For me, January is always a great time for “junk food” style games to play. It’s just past the busy holiday season where I normally have finished at least one or two AAA titles I picked up during the end of the year sales, and I’m recovering from massive amounts of overtime from my day job. These types of experiences typically involve de-stressing, zoning out, and blowing the living Hell out of enemies. This is where Blackwind comes in and serves its purpose with minimal issues.

The game follows a teenager by the name of James Hawkins, who is thrust into the metal shoes of a mech to fend off an alien invasion. In typical teenage fashion, James is kind of an angsty whiner who overreacts to everything the story throws at him. I quickly grew tired of the back and forth between the suit’s AI, voiced by a female who sounds about as thrilled to be there as she would sitting in at a week-long Magic The Gathering tournament, and our overly emo protagonist. It wasn’t long before I turned off the voiceovers and skipped any and all cut-scenes going forward.

The action is where the meat of this game can be found, and it’s packed to the top of the bag with greasy hamburgers. Almost like a White Castle Crave Case in video game form. Your trusty mech is equipped with enough firepower to take down a decent-sized country single-handedly, and regular upgrades can be unlocked at a rapid pace, keeping the action fresh. There is a great mix of ranged, melee, and special moves, with some enemies requiring specific attacks to be taken down. Regardless of which method you use, the game handles extremely well. Your attacks feel like they have the proper amount of oomph to them and combat is mostly a joy across the board. This is assuming you’re playing solo.

This title offers “cooperative” gameplay, but I say that in quotations because this doesn’t quite fit the bill for me. The second player is mere a small orb that floats about as a turret of sorts. For me, it feels more like a way to appease a small child who wants to play along, giving them a controller that was unplugged or missing the batteries. The biggest issue here is that not only do you have to hold down one of the D-pad buttons to release the turret, but it removes your ranged options entirely. I am normally the biggest advocate for two-player options in games, but this option made an otherwise decent experience a slog that removed all semblance of balance in combat. Sadly, it also resulted in me getting a really disappointed child who was told he had to play something else when I died the fourth time, simply because I was bringing a fist to a gunfight.

Between combat segments, there is a fair amount of exploration and platforming involved, which is likely why the co-op suffers. The areas are typically kind of cluttered with background elements that would make two mechs within the same space feel a bit cramped. Your mech is equipped with a double jump that becomes almost a full-on jetpack by the end of the game; however, early in the platforming can be a bit wonky. There is a lack of a map entirely, no waypoints, and some of the assets look similar to one another, to the point I was left wandering around small sections for longer than I would have preferred. Additionally, there is a staggering amount of invisible floors and sections that allowed me to skip some of the more troublesome jumps entirely.

Outside of the John Cena inspired floors, the visuals check the right boxes. There are plenty of varied areas to explore despite the repeated assets, some of which are switches you must interact with, but blend in with random junk you can bust apart for the coveted currency to upgrade your robotic suit. Aside from this, I have no major complaints and enjoyed staring mindlessly at my screen for about six or so hours to complete the story.

Much like a bag of your favorite salty snack food, there is a fair amount of dead air in Blackwind; but there is just enough to consume to keep you interested if action games are your thing. And much like your junk food, don’t share it with anyone else, or you may walk away feeling kind of cheated.

8 out of 10

Pros

• Fluid Combat That Controls Well
• Decent Arsenal of Upgrades
• A Great Game for Zoning Out and Decompressing

Cons

• Disappointing Co-Op
• Bland Writing/Voice Acting
• Some Minor Platforming Issues

Blackwind was developed by Drakkar Dev and published by Blowfish Games The game is available for NS, PC, PS4, PS5, X1, and XSX. The game was provided to us for review on X1 and played on a XSX. If you’d like to see more of Blackwind, check out the publisher’s site.

 

Here at GBG we use a rating method that you are more than likely familiar with – a scale of 1 to 10. For clarification, we intend on using the entire scale: 1-4 is something you should probably avoid paying for; 5-7 is something that is worth playing, but probably not at full price; 8-10 is a great title that you can feel confident about buying. If you have any questions or comments about how we rate a game, please let us know.

 

 

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