I just put in around 30-40 minutes on 8-Bit Commando. I would not recommend it. I got it in a bundle and was excited to try it because it's like a Contra game, so yay! Unfortunately, it's not very good. The game is extremely extremely slow and sluggish, the levels are okay but not really up to the calibre of a Contra game, it doesn't look very good (the background tiles don't tile properly, so there are odd borders between segments). Unlike Contra you take multiple hits. When you die, you restart at the most recent checkpoint. But the timer keeps ticking down. You have five minutes to finish a stage (there are 6 stages, I finished 4 and tried the 5th). There are bosses and they are sort of Contra-like but... the tightness just isn't there. Like, it doesn't feel satisfying to move through the stages, dodge enemies, and shoot them. Also powerups are sporadic and often useless.
Also the title screen just says "Commando", not "8-Bit Commando". It has 360 controller support but you can't use the d-pad only the analog sticks. The default resolution is like 800x600 and if you try to change resolution, it changes resolution every time you switch (so you have to change resolution like 20 times to get to 1920x1080). Just really rough around the edges in that regard.
Basically I feel like this game is a prime example of something that either isn't ready for release or is more appropriate for a service like Desura. It's just not there. It's not that it's a bad game, it's that it's not a professional product yet. It still needs time in the incubator.
There's no achievement support. There are leaderboards but a) no one is playing this (I was top 50 even in levels I did poop on) and b) the leaderboard is some weird aggregate of your number of enemies killed, accuracy, and time so it wasn't really clear how my performance would translate into the leaderboards. There is no steam cloud support. There are no trading cards.
Oh well, there's always the winter sale.
