Review Shamslux 2/5 · May 24, 2025
Lend It to Your Worst Enemy
Keeping this review brief. I played this game out of curiosity because a relative had mentioned it a lot. Maybe that person was thinking of the NES version, but I ended up getting this Game Boy version because I was in the middle of a course focused on completing some games on that platform.
I had just come from Super …
Keeping this review brief. I played this game out of curiosity because a relative had mentioned it a lot. Maybe that person was thinking of the NES version, but I ended up getting this Game Boy version because I was in the middle of a course focused on completing some games on that platform.
I had just come from Super Mario Land, which is pretty chill, and then I landed on this game. Graphically, well, it was weird at first; some sprites overlap, but I'm not sure if it was like that in the original, as I played it on the Switch Lite. The sound and gameplay were reasonable, but the biggest problem is that it's an absurdly difficult game. It took me almost an hour, whereas more "hardcore" players finish it in 20 minutes. I'm not very talented or patient with games like this, so if it weren't for RetroArch's native save state feature, I wouldn't have been able to finish it in an hour.
It's brutally difficult, although some patterns are noticeable, especially with the bosses, so you can exploit them (e.g., jump, hit, and dodge). The last stage involves a jetpack and obstacles with enemies, but the brutal part is the extremely short time limit. Without the save state feature to preserve the scarce "continues," it would basically take me a lifetime of trial and error to memorize all the level patterns, not to mention the chance of human error ruining everything.
I'm not much of a sadist, so I don't see much point in this type of game, especially on a portable device that should offer a relaxing experience, not one that makes you want to throw the console against the wall, hahaha.
But maybe other people love these ultra-difficult and short games (the enormous difficulty is probably to compensate for the game being shorter).
Well, the experience was worth it in the end, but I didn't like the game very much. Mega Man X was also very difficult, but the design was better, the gameplay, etc. Could it have been a Game Boy limitation? Maybe.
