However, each step is tested and required. It all sounds confusing and redundant and writing it out was just as repetitious. On the ground, go left through the newly opened door and punch through the stick barrier to the next spirit. Go left past the checkpoint, grab the bear and head left down and left down. Go right to the tree-ladder and climb to the top. Turn right, drop down to the ground, turn left, punch out the snails and punch the crate right. Drop down, jump atop the bear at right, drop right then turn around and punch the crate left. Go left, climb the tree ladder to the top and go right past the bear and the checkpoint. Turn around and punch the crate right where it will drop again. Go left past the checkpoint, hop on the bear and drop left. Go right and climb the narrow tree-ladder at right to the very top. Go right and smash down again to the ground. Smash down on the stick barrier behind you. Jump on the bear at right and punch the crate left. Ditch the bear.Ĭlimb the narrow tree-ladder at left to the top (you'll see pink hearts), go right past a bear and the checkpoint and drop down. Left again and smash down again to the ground. Go back left and smash down through the stick barrier. Jump on the bear beast at left and punch (or push) the crate to the right where it will drop. All the pieces are here for an amazing game they just need to be put together more cohesively. The controls feel good enough, the lead character has a powerful presence, and the music does a nice trick where it gets sinister whenever you zombify a subject. When I drop an exploding bee hive on a pack of armored snails, or when I navigate a maze of wooden barriers and tunnels with a pair of zombie slave bears, I can feel the same kind of exuberance and love that went into Fat Cat or Final Ninja Zero (the same production team worked on all three games). There are enough moments of real ingenuity, though, that I can still recommend that you play some Parasite. This game is an action platformer wearing the clothing of a puzzle platformer, and neither role fits comfortably.
Parasite in city unlimited health full#
And then there are three full levels about flying that horrible acorn. That you get to ride an acorn like a guided missile, but the screen is too small for you to see oncoming hazards in time. It's maddening to me that the pig's spitballs can rebound off of walls to hit difficult targets, but there are only two such targets in the entire game. But Parasite mostly wallows in platforming and reflex challenges, sometimes the exact same challenges several times in a row. Having a bruiser, a helicopter, and a projectile vomiter at your disposal, you'd think there would be more puzzles involved. The central concept is so good, I wish that the level design supported it better. The purposeful slither of the alien, the clumsy toddle of the bear-monkey, the way your enslaved subjects drool with soulless malevolence - if you have even a touch of the arch-villain in you, this game will charm you down to the core of your thin, waxed mustache. Although the mainly purple-and-green background color scheme had a depressing effect on me over time, I could never get enough of the character animation. For example, the kitty-fly not only serves as an air taxi, it can transport crates and other objects with its tail.Īnalysis: Parasite is yet another great-looking game from Nitrome. Most of the gameplay over the course of the game's 20 levels revolves around using the natural abilities of these creatures to overcome obstacles. Most of your victims will take one of three forms: a kitten with insect wings, a silverback bear-monkey, or a gob-horking pig. Once you have enslaved a creature, press to use its unique ability (if it has one) and to abandon it to live out the rest of its days in peace and prosperity. Your best survival strategy then, as a morally flexible space parasite, is to find a medium-sized creature and jump on its head, thrusting your tentacles into its skull and steering it around by tugging on its brain-meats. In a break with the Nitrome tradition of three-unit health bars, anything you touch will kill you. Move your soft, squishy, vulnerable body around with the keys and jump with the key. If you had bones, you would be bad to them. You strut when you walk, you break wind freely, and you feed on the life-blood of planets. Your space ship is a cross between a hot rod and a coal boiler. Your goal in this new platform game from Nitrome is to destroy all of the world's tree spirits (played here by the supporting cast of Princess Mononoke) and replace them with mining structures. You are the Parasite, a squelching land squid from the stars who sees profit opportunities where a less sophisticated alien might see bunnies and butterflies.