Bonesaw

This is the first review I've published, so give me any and all criticism you can. My scoring system isn't exactly industry standard, but it's been designed to be fair.

The title screen, ladies and gentlemen.

Bonesaw is a freeware 2D action game, developed by some students at Clarkson University as further advertising for their team. Although it was originally going to just be a small local project full of in jokes; a small community had built up around the game during development, and that convinced the developers to make sure the game made sense to anyone who played the game.

Gameplay: 2
+2 Fun
+2 Challenging
-2 Repetitive

Gameplay is essential for any form of action game, and Bonesaw does deliver. The controls are simple, just the arrow keys, jump(z), attack(x), and Bonesaw(space). Mashing the attack button will result in a four hit combo, and pressing the attack button while jumping results in a kick that can be comboed into. The bonesaw mechanics take some more explaining, though. Above your health bar, there is another bar, with jagged teeth running along it. This is the Bonesaw bar. Every time you kill an enemy, it goes up a bit. Any time you get hurt, it goes down a bit. When it's full, the game will pause for a moment as Randy Savage (no, really) shouts out "BONESAW IS READY!". At this point, you can press space to unleash the hilariously overpowered strength of the Bonesaw, which decimates the enemies before it, as a basic attack shoots out a beam of energy that goes through walls, can combo up to five hits, and deals massive damage to boot.

There are other weapons available, although they are quite rare. There are several forms of hockey stick, which allow you to hit things farther away, but also do things like give a charge attack, or a projectile, or what have you. They're certainly an improvement over having nothing, but as you lose them if you get hit, they aren't as useful as one might think. On the plus side, you can take them out of a level, assuming you've finished it once.

This AFTER he's been defeated once. He's not exactly bright.

Thing is the game is hard, as it takes after old NES games, which, while fun, weren't designed for sitting on a couch and playing for a while, they were designed for arcades. Bonesaw took a lot of tips for gameplay from those old games, such as a life system, and enemies designed to catch you unawares. The life system's pretty basic: run out of health, you die, lose a life, go back to the beginning of the room. Run out of lives, start the level over again. Nice and easy to understand. The enemies are a lot worse, though. Most of them are variants on some three kinds of enemy. There's a standard Hockey player, who basically stands around, and attacks with a weak version of the player's moveset. There's some weird mask/demon/kirby/firebreather thing, which has a tendency to stop jumps on later levels by hitting the player in the air. There's also a bombsnail thing, which likes to explode at just the wrong time, rocketing the player into a wall. The platforming, which takes up a good half of the gameplay, is simple, but requires some pixel perfect jumps. If you want to prepare for this game, dust off the NES in the back, you'll need the practice.

The Bosses add their own level of difficulty, being of the puzzle boss variety. I've got nothing against puzzle bosses, it's quite fun to work out their weaknesses, and figure out how to exploit them. The issue comes when you have to exploit them in the same way some fifteen times to defeat them. Mario games defaulted to three repetitions for a reason, and it's because they get boring really fast otherwise. That same repetition bogs down the whole game, too. Playing the game becomes a long slog of killing the same enemy over and over until you screw up a jump and have to do it again, taking the challenge the game had and beating you over the head with it until the player says "screw this" and leaves. Just in case that isn't enough, there are secret levels that require gathering "pucks" scattered in hard to reach areas of all of the levels, many of which require retrying the same level multiple times, such as the first puck in the third level.

Graphics: 0
+1 Clear
-1 Poor Enemy design

Seriously, what in the world is it supposed to be?

As mentioned before, the game takes after NES games. It's especially noticeable in the graphics, as they are styled towards the 8-Bit console, with four color sprites (Three+transparent), and simple, clean backgrounds. The tiles make no attempt to break the grid, which is quite fine, as the grid makes the platforming sections far easier, and in fact, it's very easy to see what is going on at all times when playing.

I do have an issue with the enemy designs in the game, though. While there are some 20+ enemies in the game, most of them are recolors of other ones, and barely behave differently. The distinction between an ice world hockey player and a grass world hockey player is the change from blue to red. They have slight distinctions in gameplay terms, though, so it's worth keeping them separate visually. Worse is the aforementioned Kirby/demon/firebreather/mask thing. Just look at the caption, it says it all.

Music: -1
+1 Fits well
-1 Sounds Clash
-1 Repetitive

See? All the options, right there. No mute button in sight.

The music also takes after NES games, and brings some MIDI tunes that fit well. Most of the sounds are alright, but the "Bonesaw is ready!" sound sticks out like a malformed thumb jammed onto a brick wall. It's musically disgusting, and kind of ugly.

And again, the repetition strikes. You thought it ended with the gameplay? oh no, you haven't seen anything yet. While the music fits well, the game also seems limited to some four songs, and plays them constantly. It gets annoying after a while, say, the amount of time it takes to get halfway through a level. There's no option to turn it off either, forcing you to listen to the same mediocre music over and over and over and over and I think you get the idea.

Story: -2
-2 Boring

Just be thankful that the game's story is consise. You know what? Here's the story, in full.

In a far off land, the Golden Knights hockey team is preparing for a big game against their rivals the St. Lawrence Saints.  They've been training for days, and now they are ready to head home.

Suddenly out of nowhere, the evil head Ref has appeared.  Using some sort of mysterious power, he traps the Golden Knights in a different dimension.  The ref claims that he is tired of the endless harassment he recieves from the Golden Knight fans in their home ice.

But one Golden Knight had remained, as he was out retrieving Pulled Pork Sandwiches for the head coach of the Knights.  Upon returning, he realizes that his team has gone missing.  The Coach tells him what happened, and gives the lone Golden Knight the task of tracking down this Ref, no matter where it may take him.

You, the lone Golden Knight are the only hope!  How will you ever pull this off?  If there was only some sort of legendary weapon you could summon forth in your time of need...

Bonesaw is Ready!

Yup. That's it. It's all in the readme, with a neat little cinematic when you start the game, and another at the end, with some dialog in between. Chances are you've forgotten entirely about the quest by the time you've finished the game.

Storytelling: 0


The dialog is all you get to tell the story in game, plus some cinematics at either end. Bonesaw didn't do anything wrong with that, but it didn't exactly do anything right, either.


Total: -1, which translates to 34/100.


There are better games you could spend your time on. If you really want to wish you were playing a proper NES for a bit, google it, it's freeware, you can then delete it off your hard drive, and get an NES emulator instead, where you can play good games instead.


Criticisms please.