This week for Retro Monday, I played Chalkitdown’s pick, “Low G Man: The Low Gravity Man”, an action platformer released in 1990 for the Nintendo Entertainment System. I’d never played this before, but I had heard good things about it. Well, lets start with how it looks. The style of the game is pretty great. The visuals are well done with the colour palette used being very effective. The sprites are all good also.
Now on to the gameplay and it’s got an interesting twist. You shoot your enemies, but that won’t kill them. You shoot them to stun them, which then allows you to walk up to them, and either jump on top of the enemies and press down and fire to spear them or up and fire if they are in the air above you. It’s a really cool mechanic, and it would be interesting to see something similar in more games.
The level design is also on point for the most part. The levels are side scrolling but some have verticality to them also. One issue I did have was in the water level (I think level 2-2). This was all vertical, which would be fine, but it scrolls downwards, causing you to drop into enemies you couldn’t possibly know were there.
Now as with most Retro Monday games, this is another I didn’t complete so I can only rate it on what I have played. I’ll be honest I really enjoyed it apart from a few things. The water level and a couple of the bosses, which can be a pain in the rump. All in all I’d say this is definitely worth a look and you could do a lot worse than this. Give it a try, you have nothing to lose.
Verdict: Recommended.