➤ Forza Polpo, the review of a modern Jumping Flash emulator 🕹

The review of Forza Polpo!, a title that looks at Jumping Flash!, in search of now forgotten forms of play.

Video games often look to the past. After all, it is impossible not to do it when you have more than fifty years behind you. There is a lot to recover or rediscover, which is why many developers take the path of recovering some cult title to try to offer something new in a market full of obsolete masterpieces, so to speak, as did the development studio Monte Gallo, which sought the 90s for his first job.

La Forza Polpo Review It will clarify whether in this case we are facing a successful recovery or not.

Control the octopus

Forza Polpo, the review of a modern Jumping Flash emulator — The Forza Octopus levels are very beautiful.

Forza Polpo is very well described for its script. We find ourselves in a post-apocalyptic world where everything seems frozen in time and forgotten by humans. We are in a Japan stuck in the 90s, whose places are fragmented, literally, as if they were parts of memory adrift in space and time. After playing for a few hours we couldn't help but think that more than a story, developer Monte Gallo's is almost a poetic statement, so careful is the game to revisit some of the mechanics of Jumping Flash! cult title released on the first PlayStation, almost like recovering a game remained frozen for decades, reissues aside. So here we also find ourselves faced with a strange mix between first-person shooter and platform game in which, in the role of a small robotic octopus, the octopus of the title, we have to find hidden cubes in sixteen levels to defeat Dr. .Prometo and his army of robots.

At first, controlling Polpo seems quite complicated, between heavy movements, handling the triple jump, which must be kept at the right pace for it to be performed perfectly, and some not exactly intuitive systems, such as changing weapons and energy. On the first level there are blackboards that roughly explain more or less all the main movements, but some concepts are still a little obscure until you've had some practice.

Fortunately, we soon realize that the initial complications are only apparent and that, in reality, the problem more than anything else is that we are no longer accustomed to breaking certain patterns... or even simply to the possibility that There is a world outside of them. Just for comparison purposes we went to watch some Jumping Flash videos! We had played it a long time ago and relying solely on memory is no longer the case after so many years. Looking at them we see the many similarities with the title of Monte Gallo, similarities that in some way made us happy because they indicate that there is life outside the rhetoric of the market lords.

What made us even more happy is that Forza Polpo works in general and that, having a few meters of comparison, it turns out to be a refreshing experience in its own way. Getting into the game is a bit slow, considering that it is a ACT!, but you will soon find yourself performing evolutions that were previously thought impossible, jumping on very high platforms, fighting with enemies in the air and taking advantage of the unique characteristics of the levels, which add a lot to a deeply modern experience, despite its declared look at the past. The graphic style itself, certainly anime, seems designed to make each level a kind of imaginary slide of a world that no longer exists. Conceptually, the operation was a success.

Of course, the levels are not huge (only the endings are larger than the others), but they do what they should, presenting themselves as labyrinths of floating objects in which you have to find your way to reach the cubes, also overcoming passages that apparently seem impossible, but which are always linked to different elements of the scenario to be deciphered, so much so that, especially at advanced levels, the component puzzle It acquires considerable importance in the game's economy.

However, it is very present. power management of Polpo that consumes the same amount of energy to jump, float and shoot as a Steam Deck used to play a triple-A game. Surrounding the levels are energy cells that, when collected, accumulate in Polpo's reserve. It is the player who must use them when he runs out of energy. In the early levels there are many of them, often in plain sight, while in the advanced levels there are fewer and often hidden. In this way, experimentation with game systems is encouraged, with great waste in terms of energy consumed, preparing the player for more careful handling of Polpo as the adventure progresses. In any case, Monte Gallo has also included a specific mode for those who do not want to worry about energy, the Arcade mode, much more direct than the main one, but also a little more superficial.

I enemies Of them I am the weakest part. They are basically very stylized robots, which follow more or less the same attack patterns and can be shot down with the machine gun supplied with Polpo. There are also larger enemies, which must be attacked in a different way (for example, using more powerful missiles), but in general shooting does not produce interesting reactions or situations, also taking into account the not very high variety of opponents. Note that the enemies are not unpleasant, just insignificant. They are a distraction, necessary to the conversation about energy management, but unfocused nonetheless. Overall, though, Forza Polpo is an experience worth having, especially if you're looking for a game that has some original ideas.

Conclusions

Tested version PC with Windows digital delivery Steam Price 14,99 € Holygamerz.com 8.0 Readers (4) 7.3 your vote

Come on Polpo, we liked it a lot. It's not a masterpiece, but it's one of those games that cleverly takes a little-used model and builds a new experience on top of it, making it somewhat unique. Maybe a little more could have been done with the enemies and maybe we could have thought of a less constipated way to get into the game, but overall it works, also considering the very low price. Give it a chance, especially if you loved Jumping Flash.