In case you weren’t aware from my blog photo and moniker, I am definitely a big fan of the Action/Adventure genre in gaming, this is where I feel most comfortable. I do try to explore other areas, sometimes with success as in my growing confidence with First Person Shooters, or mastering my fear of both the tank controls and horror aspect of the Resident Evil series. Other times not so much – side-scrolling platformers will always be the bane of my existence. Like most gamers, I will give anything a go, as you never know what may become your next favourite game. Though GRIDD: Retroenhanced wasn’t destined to become my next fave game, it turned out that I can enjoy this type of game despite my inexperience. Or warning from the game itself.
GRIDD: Retroenhanced is classed as an arcade shooter, and with it’s pulsating music and stylish neon graphics, it takes you right back to the 1980s. This is what drew me to play it. Now I knew I was never really going to master this one. My history with fast moving games is pretty dismal – unless it’s a cart racer, I have little hope in hell of even passing the training mode of most racers. But the look and sound of this was intriguing, I really wanted to have a go on it.
The premise is pretty easy to follow; you speed on a track and shoot the obstacles to gain more points. Avoid the obstacles. You try to get to the end by beating the bosses. And then you try again apparently. I’m only speculating on the last bit, as I wasn’t skilled enough to quite get to the end.
As for the controls, there is no acceleration nor a forward one. You move left/right, up/down with the left stick and press a controller button on the right to shoot. There is a very short tutorial clip to explain this, but that wasn’t necessary in my case for once.
Thankfully the obstacles are always in the same place, and do the same thing, so with a bit of practice I could predict where to shoot and dodge. In theory. In practice, my reflexes aren’t always that responsive and what should be a clean, easy run just was never to be. But not that I didn’t enjoy trying. This game is fun.
As I stated above, I was never able to finish the whole circuit, although I did come very close. I ended up playing it at least 20 times and it was satisfying seeing my score slowly improve after each play, and I will be returning to try to get to that final boss.
This game was clearly made for the retro arcade shooter crowd. But even though will never likely to be one of those hallowed gamer-types, I still had fun with it and will keep it installed for some light diversion.
GRIDD: Retroenhanced is available now on Xbox One and PC. Developed by Antab Studios, published by Kongregate
Lady Gamer 