Retro adventure with punishing difficulty level
If the sound of a game which claims to be one of the hardest ever invented sounds like something that would appeal to you, or you enjoy super-hard games like Manic Miner, then this is going to be right up your alley. Even without this boastful statement though to build-up its reputation though, The Game With No Name is still an intriguing little platformer/puzzler that is marred only by its excessive difficulty and if this quality had been toned down, it would have been a better game for it. The game's premise is simple enough and sees players crash landing on an alien world and who must then search the planet for the crystals which will power up the ship and return you safely home. This requires a combination of quick reflexes and quick thinking as you negotiate the many and varied levels filled with cunning puzzles and which require pitch perfect timing to explore safely. However, achieving this is obviously much more difficult than it sounds, thanks in part to the game's fiendishly challenging level design and controls. Even the slightest error in timing will bring about an untimely death and which will send you immediately back to the start, making all those hours of hard work redundant and forcing you to start again. It is to the game's credit however, that if you are of the right frame of mind, you will do exactly what is expected of you and proceed to make all those eye-wateringly jumps and slick moves once more, just to prove that you can and it wasn't all a fluke. However, for those less patient gamers, it is likely that after the first few futile deaths, The Game With No Name will be abandoned for something a little more forgiving. This is a shame as there are a lot of clever ideas on display here but which will sadly be missed by most gamers.
