Gamers today are a bit spoiled. When I was growing up during the NES and Sega Genesis era, most games did not offer multiple difficulties and you got what you got. Either you got better at the game, or you were doomed to repeat the first few levels of a game for all eternity. In present time, if a game is too difficult we compare it to Dark Souls or Cuphead and write it off as too hard and run off to play something on very easy where the enemies stand there with a big neon sign that says “Shoot me derp a derp a derp.” The controller busting challenge of games like Battletoads or Contra is lost on today’s generation. Riddled Corpses EX took me on a nice nostalgic journey through its difficult yet fair zombie and demon filled world.

The game offers 3 modes, all of which can be played in couch co-op with another player. The first is the standard story mode, which plays like a twin stick shooter RPG hybrid, where you collect gold to level up your character. There’s also an arcade mode, which challenges the player to complete the story with 3 lives, leveling up by collecting pick-ups along the way. The third is a survival mode, which is essentially what the name implies. Overall, these experiences are fun, although co-op play is hindered by the fact that there are no continues and in the event one of the players runs out of lives, they can steal them from the other player. I’m not sure if this was a glitch or how it was intended, but at one point my son managed to steal my only remaining life, essentially tagging me out of the game after depleting all of our reserves, only to quickly die. Needless to say, we didn’t spend much time in the co-op mode.

The game plays much like an arena shooter in the vein of Smash TV, with each level starting and stopping, pushing you forward as you battle waves of enemies. Each of the 5 levels feature a number of waves culminating in a boss battle. Chances are you will have to grind a bit, as the difficulty I mentioned above is in full swing, and even after leveling your character of choice it’s a bit of a challenge. You’ll need to quickly maneuver, evading enemies and traps to complete the level. Finding gold and pick-ups is almost as important as survival, as the upgrades and additional characters require quite a bit for purchasing. In addition to gold you can find the likes of dynamite, which works as a bomb clearing the level, or a stopwatch that allows you to stop time completely if you’re overwhelmed. These can be saved for when you really need them, which is a plus because they drop at random.

The overall presentation is a great throwback to the games of yesteryear, with the pixelated design and polyphonic soundtrack. I am sure that the game couldn’t have run well on the older systems the style pays tribute to; however, I often forgot I was playing a modern game. The visuals look like a strange mash up of The Legend of Zelda and Super Mario World. There is a huge variety of enemies, each more grotesque or comical than the last, with zombies in various forms or guises making up the bulk of them. I noticed a few with attributes that appear to be throwbacks to older games, such as a form of zombie that looks spot on like the protagonist from the Splatterhouse NES game.

The boss encounters are sadly the weakest link. I found the portions of the game leading up to them to be much more challenging, with the boss patterns being overly predictable, resulting in them being dispatched much quicker than most of the mid-sized enemies that pop up from time to time.

There is a fair bit of replay value for those who don’t mind some grinding as mentioned previously. There are upgrades for each character, as well as a number of unlockable characters to access. You’ll also find a number of collectibles, which appear at random as various character heads, which unlock additional features. Having completed 4 of the 5 levels at this time, I have managed to earn multiples of all of them except for a single head, which may frustrate some players due to the randomness of this goal.

If you’re like me and yearn for a simpler experience that rewards players who are willing to laugh at death in the face and keep coming back for more, Riddled Corpses EX will be up your alley. If you’re looking to shoot more enemies that stand still drooling with their guns filled with crayons, I’d recommend visiting another title.

 8 out of 10

Pros

• Great Throwback Design
• Punishing Yet Fair Difficulty
• Huge Variety of Enemies
• Multiple Game Modes

Cons

• Randomized Collectibles
• Co-op System Needs Work
• Unimpressive Bosses

Riddled Corpses EX was developed by Diabolical Minds and published by COWCAT Games. It launched on PC in 2015, as well as PS4, X1 and Vita June 5th, 2018. The game was provided to us for review on X1. If you’d like to see more of Riddled Corpses EX, check out the Steam Page.

 

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