REVIEW – Retro feeling with awesome graphics and non-stop action gameplay is back with Housemarque which is a games studio synonymous with the twin-stick shoot-em-up genre of video games. Starting with the 1993 release of Stardust for the Amiga/ST and DOS, while the developer tried his hand in other genres, they have usually stayed inside what’s worked for them.

If you’ve played Super Stardust, Resogun or Alienation, you already know a little bit about what Matterfall will have in store for you: ultra-fast action, full of challenges and tons of explosions … epic explosions, to be more precise. But Matterfall also adds some new ingredients in the mix …

With a combination of shooting and platformer play, your success will depend on your control of the Smart Matter, a mysterious foreign resource that has infected the world and threatens to erase humanity.

By using your Matter Jet to generate blue material, you can create platforms to explore more of the environment or form shields to protect yourself while battling hordes of enemies in this living Hell, which invaded Earth.

Still, it’s easy to pick out the stark contrasts between Matterfall and Resogun. Unlike Resogun, Matterfall is more of a 2D Metroidvania action platformer – for the uninitiated, Resogun was a much simpler concept. However, the two share a visual language that made it easy for me to draw parallels between them.

Polished

The game started me out slowly with a tutorial that made sure I had time to experiment with platforming controls. This is Housemarque’s first platformer since Outland, but it still felt polished and refined, and more importantly it blended with the bullet-hell/shooter elements of Resogun seamlessly.

After I mastered the simple jump and double-jump controls (though jump is tied to R1, which feels weird), I learned the all-important dash move. Not only can the dash move help you navigate the platforming, but more importantly it can be used in combat to freeze enemies and weaken them to gunfire. The melting pot of arcade and platforming concepts made Matterfall a little difficult for me to grasp at first, but slowly I started to get the hang of it and chain the jumping, shooting, and dashing together more effectively. As I ran into more enemies it became important to master these controls as I needed to quickly instigate the dash move to get the drop on foes.

It would not be a Housemarque game if the challenge was not very, very high, but it’s still a fair fight. Avalon Darrow, the female hero responsible for saving mankind, has at his disposal a wide variety of weapons as well as powerful abilities that will allow you to choose your style of play.

Whether it’s the short range of a powerful shotgun or the calculated rebound of a pomegranate launcher, it’s up to you to choose how to stay in the rankings and keep the world ranking.

Get used to these controls!

The very first thing you’ll notice while playing Matterfall is that its control scheme is unlike most any other platformer out there. The game indeed a sidescroller, but you use the shoulder buttons for a lot of your moves. R1 jumps/double-jumps, L1 phase shifts you through special blue walls, and temporarily freezes enemies caught in your wake, R2 fires grenades for area damage, and L2 enables a special kind of beam from your gun that can materialize platforms at certain locations, where matter falls into place. Got it?

While you’re busy doing all this jumping and platforming, your main mission will still be to take out typical sci-fi shooter enemies. As a matter (haha, get it?) of fact, Matterfall also serves as that type of game – the right stick allows you to shoot your main weapon, while you’re platforming. In fact, this takes some getting used to, and your first instinct may be to stop and take aim. Still, most enemies are very fast-moving and they will fire back at you, so you’ll need to learn to do more than one thing at a time if you hope to survive.

No safe zone to hide

Clearly Matterfall has been designed to discourage players from hanging back and playing it safe. There aren’t many places to hide behind and the ability to take pot-shots at enemies isn’t truly available. Often, I felt pushed to dodge right into the middle of the fray and start unleashing hell.

I ran into a series of enemies, varying from harmless flying types to hulking brutes with shields, but there are also boss fights in Matterfall and these sometimes call for a little extra firepower. One thing I did was use my special attacks, like the grenade launcher or special heat-seeking bullets to get the advantage. The other option I had was to go into overdrive, which freezes all enemies and triples my firepower.

But Housemarque wasn’t done introducing elements to the game. The last mechanic is the blue ray (I’ll avoid any “blu-ray”/Sony jokes) that was my secondary weapon. Well, it isn’t really a weapon, though I could use it to explode enemies that were frozen with the dash move. The ray is typically used to manipulate the environment for platforming. Certain walls and platforms can be materialized using the ray, though they only last for a few seconds, meaning l had to move quickly or risk taking a long fall.

Intense!

One thing for sure: this is a very intense game! There are a lot of flashing effects going on, and what feels like dozens of things to watch and react to on-screen. Still, when you’re right in the action, things don’t seem so crazy. When you play more, you will feel like entering that zen-like brain mode that can occur during longer stretches of reflex gaming, where each move was coordinated in response to whatever moves. As for me: I didn’t play perfectly, but thankfully the game does occasionally drop health to keep the fight going.

While the audio took a backseat to the action, if you know Housemarque, then you know what to expect – lots of thumping, bass-heavy arcade tracks which remind you the best soundtracks for the Amiga. Those tunes with a classic, retro feeling are mixed with the futuristic sound effects of the environments in which you find yourself. The world of Matterfall is a futuristic, perhaps post-apocalyptic one, with lots of bright, neon colors. The game was running at 60 frames per second on both PS4 and PS4 Pro.

Takes time to master

Matterfall is one of those games that takes a while to master, but one that will also be rewarding to those who invest the time to grasp the controls. Due to those controls, it’s not the most accessible title from Housemarque, however, the classic, Turrican/Metroid-like feeling, and gameplay will enchant those looking for a truly retro experience, with outstanding graphics.

-BadSector-

Publisher: Sony Computer Entertainment

Developer: Housemarque

Genre: Platformer, Action

Release date: 15.08.2017