I THINK HATE IS A STRONG WORD, BUT I DEFINITELY DON’T LOVE IT.
What a mouthful of a title.
I Hate Running Backwards is a vertical scrolling shooter akin to games like the classic arcade title 1942 or Raiden, with a twist that the character is at the top of the screen while the screen scrolls upwards and enemies swarm from the bottom. Shooting is done in a straight line down from the player character, and special abilities can be activated to get out of sticky situations. Unlike these classic shooters is the fact that each stage and its enemy encounters are randomly generated. This means there is no pattern or level memorization. This can be a problem. It means luck plays a big part in player success, such as swarms of enemies spawning right before a minefield leading to a cheap death. Deaths based on dice rolls in skill based games are always lame.
PLATFORMS: PC, XB1 (REVIEWED), PS4, SWITCH
MSRP: $14.99
PRICE I’D PAY: $9.99
A big part of I Hate Running Backwards is character selection. Each character has their own primary and secondary weapons as well as special abilities, but also move at different speeds and have different amounts of health, etc. Regardless of which character is chosen though, the game is unfortunately still very much based around luck. I bring this up again because it really doesn’t matter which character is chosen because specific skills will generally not change the outcome of a bad luck run. Another thing to note is that the primary and secondary weapons require ammo to be used, lest the character be sent back to firing a weak and slow shot from their backup weapon. There are also special weapons that can be picked up and used such as mines, ice throwers, magic spells. Once these weapons run out however they are no longer usable.
At the end of every stage is a boss battle, which is the only consistent parts of the game. Pattern recognition and skill are required for victory, which makes the boss battles far more enjoyable than the main stages. Once a boss is completed a statue is placed by the portal of the main room, where a switch can be toggled to apply different modifiers to the game. Also, after defeating the boss the level can be skipped by entering a portal. To warp to the jungle themed Stage 2 after finishing the desert themed Stage 1, start up Stage 1 and walk into a doorway lightly decorated with grass. It is so unclear that it’s a stage skip that I actually stumbled upon it by accident, and once I closed the game and went back to it the portal was closed and I had to fight the first boss again which means my progress is essentially gone. Speaking of unclear things, the game is unclear on how to unlock new characters and special items as well. Also unclear is what is going on sometimes, as everything is based on a voxel look and explodes into voxels leading to times where I could not for the life of me make out where my character was amongst the chaos.
It’s obvious this game is a Serious Sam spinoff title that lacks the Serious Sam license in its title like it’s fellow spinoff titles Serious Sam: Double D or Serious Sam: The Random Encounter. While other Devolver characters show up, the environments and enemies are Serious Sam staples. Expect a lot of Beheaded Kamikazes to show up. I love Serious Sam but it’s not enough to save this game for me. Maybe this game is better co-op, but for how hectic and random it is, I can’t imagine adding more chaos into the game would fix the problems here. It’s not that the game isn’t fun, but that it is unfair far too often. There’s a difference between a hard fight and being sucker punched, and I Hate Running Backwards definitely comes off as the latter a lot. It’s unclear on its mechanics and its unlockables, and even after using both skill and luck to get past levels, my progress was gone after closing the game. Sure it maintained that I had defeated certain bosses and unlocked certain things, but if I wanted to continue the game I would have to go through all the stages again to fight my way back to where I was. This game is the definition of okay. It’s not boring, there’s definitely enjoyment to be had, but what enjoyment there is is hindered by poor decisions.
Review copy of game provided by publisher.
