Nikoderiko: The Magical World
Nikoderiko: The Magical World is a game that does not hide its inspirations — it combines the gameplay of such famous games as Donkey Kong and Crash Bandicoot. Smooth switching from side view to 3D mode and back again gives the impression of one of the most dynamic levels. But still, we must admit, the developers are slightly lacking the skills to implement a perfectly honed gameplay. And that’s what we’ll talk about in this review.
The main characters of the game, Niko and Luna, in search of treasures, get to a powerful ancient relic. However, the villain is ahead of them with his army of snakes, and the heroes have to go in pursuit of him in order to return the relic and save the innocent inhabitants of the island.
The plot in Nikoderiko: The Magical World is served well with dubbed cutscenes. But the story is so simple that an adult gamer risks getting bored watching the characters’ adventures.
All this unfolds against the backdrop of bright, colorful landscapes. The cartoon art style artfully hides graphic flaws, and as a result, Nikoderiko: The Magical World can be called one of the most beautiful platformers to date.
But let’s talk about the nuances that will not allow us to consider this game really the best platformer. The Crash Bandicoot and Rayman Legends mentioned above can boast well-honed controls, where the characters obey the slightest command from the controller, but Nikoderiko is not so ideal in this regard. Seat management is unresponsive, sometimes it is not possible to correctly calculate the distance and height of the jump, or accurately execute the kick.
As for the checkpoints, they can be placed quite far from each other, and intermediate progress, such as found secrets, is reset when defeated. Therefore, after downloading from a checkpoint, you often have to re-search for secrets and perform the same actions again, which can be annoying.
Also, an unpleasant moment awaits those who want to play in a cooperative – here it is implemented by playing together on one screen. Similar platformers often use this mode of cooperative play on the same PC or console. However, in this particular game, this mode is disappointing: while the camera follows one player, the second one risks remaining outside the screen, which makes it literally impossible to comfortably play together.
Ultimately, Nikoderiko: The Magical World is the type of game that we would like to see more often.
The project takes the best of the games from previous years and presents them in colorful packaging.
Despite the fact that the game does not have enough polish to stand on a par with the mastodons of the genre, the potential of the developers is definitely present, and therefore there is hope that their new project will be an order of magnitude better.
