By Bobinator - 5/5/10
Noitu Love
Noitu Love & The Army of the Grinning Darns - Windows (2006)
Noitu Love
Noitu Love
Noitu Love
There are only two action buttons: one for a punch attack, and the
other for jumping. Hitting both buttons together will make Noitu do a
spinning kick, which hits everyone around him but leaves him
vulnerable for a second. The game controls pretty well, but the fact
that Noitu stops for a split second can cause a small annoyance. One
element that helps makes things a little less boring are the
Evomatics, machines Noitu can use to change form. He can change into a
monkey, which lets him move faster and jump higher, a bird, which lets
him fly, and Brainy Noitu, which lets him activate control consoles
and gives him a psychic shield attack.
Unfortunately Noitu Love is generally slow-paced and repetitive. There
is not nearly enough platforming as there should be. You’ll spend more
time fighting off enemies in sealed rooms than exploring. Some of the
level bosses are pretty interesting, like a Darn that attacks you with
a long mechanical arm and an evil conductor you have to make attack
you by stomping on his piano, but all the bosses tend to take way more
damage than necessary.
There are seven levels, ranging from places like a building under
construction, a graveyard, and an airship. The last level is the real
highlight; you fight a giant robot piloted by Darnacus going inside it
and heading to the final boss fight. There's also the standard boss
rush before the last level, ending in a pretty tough fight with a
robot clone of Lori built by Darnacus.
It's not too hard to reach the end on the easier difficulty, but
Normal and beyond are much more challenging. While the games
auto-saves between levels, it also keeps up with your current stock of
lives, so if you run low near the end, it'll be a lot tougher to make
it through. In 8-bit tradition, you can't get to the final level on
the Easy difficulty. Easy ends with Lori's robot doppleganger mocking
you.
Rewards for beating the game include a harder difficulty and a Boss
Rush mode. While not quite as enjoyable as the games that inspired it,
the first Noitu Love is free. The nonexistent price makes it easier to
overlook its gameplay issues.
Noitu Love
Noitu Love
Noitu Love
Noitu Love 2
Noitu Love 2
Noitu Love 2
This sequel is almost a completely different game, and it's a lot more
fun to play. As Xoda Rap, (that's "paradox backwards") one of the
city's new peacekeepers, you're much more mobile and powerful than
Noitu was. You use the WASD/arrow keys for movement, and the mouse to
control a targetting cursor independently of your character. Clicking
anywhere on the screen will make Xoda fly to that location, and
repeated clicks will cause her to go into a flurry of chops and kicks.
You can also throw energy balls and grab enemies with the left mouse
button, although you probably won't be using these attacks quite as
much. Right clicking on the screen brings up a shield that blocks some
projectiles, and holding down the right mouse button and moving the
mouse pulls off a few special moves.
The visuals are a big step up, looking much like a Saturn game.
Joachim Sandberg’s sprites have a pretty interesting style, especially
the demented grins on the Darns. There is quite a variety of them too.
Because enemies dress up differently depending on the time period
you're in, you’ll see priest Darns who call down lightning, pimp Darns
who swing their oversized watches at you, and more. The music isn't
much of an upgrade from the original’s bleepy 8-bit songs, but the
soundtrack is a little more memorable.
The pace has also been sped up quite a bit. There's hardly a moment
where you're not moving forward or something's not happening around
you, like running through a building trying to dodge a helicopter's
shots, or trying to dodge missiles while falling down a clock tower.
You even get to fly across the desert on a hoverboard in the fourth
level. There you’ll use a lightning cannon to draw and connect lines
to enemies (a gimmick probably inspired by one of Joachim's other
games, Chalk).
In true Treasure fashion, there are a ton of boss fights, a few more
interesting than others. The real highlights are the ones at the end
of the level. They've all got their own interesting gimmick and silly
name, like "Mordecai Fluke" and "Sleeper Brakeman." One of the best
bosses is a control program who attacks with different TV channels -
whatever's on the screen will burst out of the screen to attack.
There's also a secret boss in one level who you can only encounter on
the higher difficulties.
The game is pretty easy on the lowest difficulty. Although you've got
a limited stock of continues, the health pickups are so common and the
boss patterns are so simple you probably won't die until near the end.
The Hard difficulty is quite a bit tougher, even though it does away
with the continue limit. The game's pretty short, though, at about
seven levels which last for about 10 minutes each, and it would have
been nice to see a Boss Rush mode like an original game.
This time the unlockables for beating the game include an extra hard
difficulty and two secret characters: Dopplelori and Mr. Almond.
Dopplelori, the robot double from the original game, is a lot more
projectile-focused than Xoda; her laser locks onto multiple targets at
once. Her story is a little shorter than Xoda's, but she gets a couple
of different fights and a little extra plot information. Mr. Almond,
Xoda's boss, has no actual way to attack, so you use the cursor to
blast enemies and drag him to platforms he can't reach. Because your
cursor can only shoot about 8 times before reloading, playing as him
becomes kind of like a light-gun game mixed with a platformer.
Noitu Love 2 is a huge improvement on the original game in every way,
and it's a great tribute to Treasure's best work. The game is even
more impressive since only one guy created it. My only complaint is
the game’s short length, though it’s certainly good enough to play
through multiple times. You can buy it for $10 from Joachim's website
- he even offers a pretty good sized demo, too.
Noitu Love 2
Noitu Love 2
Noitu Love 2
Noitu Love 2
Noitu Love 2
Links
Konjak.org The home of Joakim Sandberg, where you can download the first game and purchase the second game.
Noitu Love 2
There are lots of doujin games over in Japan, most of them being known
for their surprisingly high quality, even though the development teams
are very small, if not just a single person. The same kind of thing
exists over in the West, where they're usually known as "indie games."
There's sort of a philosophical difference between the two: whereas
indie games use their position to do something unique and original,
Japanese doujin titles tend to emulate otherwise dead genres like 2D
fighters, shooters and action games (which isn't to say the same thing
doesn't occasionally happen in the West too). From Europe comes the
Noitu Love series. These two loving tributes to action games of past
eras boast production values that rival some professional games.
The Noitu Love ("evolution" spelled backwards) games are made by
Joakim Sandberg, who's done a little bit of work in the professional
game industry, including some of the spritework for Contra 4. He did
almost all the work on the games himself in Multimedia Fusion - an
incredibly impressive feat.
Noitu Love 2: Devolution - Windows / Wii (2008)
The first game of the series is a pretty standard platformer, with the
gameplay, graphics and sounds based on 8-bit NES games, although the
resolution and color palette slightly surpass the NES's limitations.
The plot's about as cliché as you can get, even for the 8-bit days: In
the far future, a mad scientist known as Darnacus Damnation unleashes
a robot army onto a peaceful city. You, Noitu Love, one of the city
peacekeepers, are sent out to stop the robots, save the town, and
impress your coworker Lori.
While the original game was clearly based on old 8-bit games from the
80's, everything in the sequel is more like one of Treasure's 32-bit
games, like Mischief Makers and Silhouette Mirage. The plot is
slightly more detailed this time around: After 100 peaceful years
since the original game, an army of Darns once again attacks the city
(Darnacus Damnation, however, has never been seen again since he was
defeated by Noitu). Not only that, but somehow buildings and people
from different eras of time are starting to appear in the city. The
robotic duplicate of Noitu's girlfriend from the original game is also
running around, and she plays a pretty important role in the plot.
Noitu Love 2 is scheduled to come to the Nintendo Wii as a
downloadable WiiWare title courtesy of Golgoth Studios. The
nunchuck/remote combination should work extremely well together. Let’s
hope it includes some good extras like the WiiWare port of Cave Story
did.
Gamasutra - Road To The IGF: Konjak's Throwback An interview with the creator.
