Puss 'n Boots: Pero's Great Adventure (1990)

Beat on slow mode. This game was unbelievably simple and short. I could tell it was an early NES game. There was not even any blinking animation when you took damage. For some reason enemies sped up when I moved far enough to scroll the screen, but at least the game remembered what enemies were where. There was not much platforming so it was more of a shooter, but not really that many enemies either. The map showing the stages was completely pointless, and a lot of the game was spent driving a variety of vehicles. There was a boat, submarine, car, plane and balloon, all with a very basic slow shot. These vehicles were not upgrades to the basic walking form, rather it seemed more like the game didn't know what it wanted to be, feeling more like a series of amusement rides rather than an actual game. I got stuck at 2nd boss jumping and shooting around trying to figure out what I was supposed to do. After looking up a guide I learned how to swap weapons; start then direction. The default gun was a basic straight shot with 2 projectiles allowed, better than the 1 allowed for the vehicles. The bomb fired straight but arced towards the ground, which helped for the snake mini boss. The boomerang fired up diagonal, which was exactly what I needed to get past that boss. The final stage was one of those teleporter mazes, using doors, then the final boss was a crushing difficulty spike. I was thrown into the middle of 2 guys shooting, and it took several attempts to jump over their shots with enough spacing to not get hit again. It was a dumb fight that felt more about luck and spamming shoot. This game was meh. More content that was actually designed to make the player think about which weapon to use would have improved the experience.

5.0/10