It’s a dirty job but somebody’s got to do it, and that somebody is you. Pick up your broom and get ready to tidy up the place as you combat the forces of filth by running, jumping and sweeping your way through this stylish world.
Dustforce is a fast-response running platformer game from developer Hitbox Team and was initially released way back in January of 2012, but has since made the leap to PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 in April this year. Much like Super Meat Boy, the gameplay of Dustforce will test your dexterity and skills as you clean up more than fifty levels with one of four Dustforce characters.
A quick tutorial at the start is more than enough to show off the basic mechanics before you are thrown into the game’s hub area, where you can choose from one of four distinct levels to tackle. You can choose between City, Forest, Lab, and Library, and each has their own smaller stages, themes, and aesthetics to set them apart from each other. To navigate your way through the worlds and levels you’ll have to master the speedy running, climbing, dashing, and wall jumping mechanics that seamlessly blend together to create an incredibly fluid experience.
Hitbox wants to keep you moving and the levels are designed as a sort of track, with dust leading the way through the often complex layouts. The four characters have slightly differing stats and choosing one that best suits you will help you fight your way through the levels littered with monsters that bar your progression. You can also use basic and heavy attacks to clean up dust and monsters alike while you automatically sweep up any you walk, jump, and climb over. All the mechanics are given to you at the start and your own skill and control of these characters will carry you through the rest of the game.
While not as daunting a task as Super Meat Boy is to overcome, Dustforce is still an incredibly difficult game and one that will test your mastery of each of the skills as the levels increase in difficulty. Unless you are skilled at these types of platforming games, be ready to die over and over as you try to land that wall jump just right so as not to hit the spikes. Fortunately, there are checkpoints in each level so you won’t have to run them over and over from the beginning, and some of them are long enough to take minutes to complete rather than seconds.
Once you have completed a level you are given a score based on your finesse and completion rankings - time isn’t necessarily a factor. Finesse is your ability to maintain your combo meter throughout the run, and completion is determined by how much of the dust you’ve cleared. Simple right? Well, it can get incredibly complex and your finesse meter will drop should you not clear up dust for a few seconds, all of this pushes you to maintain a decent speed while not being judged on your time.
To aid you in your progress, Hitbox has done something more developers should consider for their games: they’ve added a replay feature that lets players watch the runs of other players straight from within the game. Once you’ve struggled to finish a level you can watch the best players in the world easily breeze through something that could have taken you hours to complete. These replays will provide valuable insight needed to fine-tune your skills to advance through the later levels as you’ll be able to see what is possible to advance. They also, of course, are frequently an abject lesson in humility.
Furthermore, you’ll need to obtain higher finesse and completion ranks to advance through the game as they’ll give you valuable keys to unlock the later levels. This might seems tedious and overly difficult for the sake of it, but truthfully it never stops being fun. You always get the sense that every level is possible and nothing is impossible. Each death teaches you more about the game and eventually you’ll overcome the obstacle.
Another reason that the game’s difficulty might not initially lead you to setting the controller down is its amazing soundtrack. The 18-track OST was composed by Terence Lee to compliment the fluid gameplay and seamless death transitions. The music is upbeat and catchy, and can easily be listened to outside of the game itself - perfect for driving, working, and anything that needs background noise. The soundtrack served as one of the initial factors that drew me into reviewing the game, and I quickly fell in love with it.
Visually, the 2D graphics are simplistic and pleasing to the eye while conveying the right amount of visual information needed to complete each level. The world uses parallax backgrounds to create a sense of depth, while the foregrounds cram plenty of detail into their 16-bit stylings. While we can’t say for sure that there is direct influence between the two games, fans of Risk of Rain will be in familiar territory.
What is truly amazing about Dustforce is how supportive of the online community Hitbox has been with not only the ability to watch replays, but post release they added in a robust level editor. The user generated levels are distributed for free through a website specifically created by Hitbox for distribution. For the console versions of the game, Hitbox held of votes to find the top 150 levels that were then ported over to be included with the game. Quite the value proposition wouldn’t you say?
If you’re looking for a challenge - complete with the perfect package of music, gameplay, and style - then you should give Dustforce a try as it has been unfairly overlooked by many. Like the best platformers it is easy to play but difficult to master. Just make sure you use a gamepad, as playing with a keyboard is an exercise in masochism.
Brian Kale
Latest posts by Brian Kale (see all)
- Heroes of The Storm Review - June 12, 2024
- New eSports Betting Site Launched - April 30, 2024
- Bloodborne Review: Of Wolves and Men. - April 2, 2024
