Analysis of the Night Slashers remake for Xbox Series

The return of a classic after 30 years

Night Slashers Remake brings us a graphical overhaul of the classic from 30 years ago, moving from the typical pixels of the 16-bit era to a slightly more attractive animation-style design. Storm Trident and Forever Entertainment gave a facelift to Data East’s beat’em up which was very common at the time among a large number of titles in the genre.

I’m going to do an analysis from the perspective of someone who grew up with arcade beat’em ups, through the magic of Mega Drive and my favorite Streets of Rage 2 to the modern era with the fourth opus developed by Dotemu. But when I came across the Night Slashers remake, I felt great disappointment.

What is the Night Slashers remake about?

In Night Slashers Remake We will play 4 heroes who plan to save the world from the supernatural nightmare that is invading it, infested with zombies, psychopaths and vampires. Our protagonists will advance through 7 neighborhoods filled with enemies where formidable enemies await us as final bosses.

And there’s nothing more to tell than the typical “save the world” story, taking revenge on Dracula on duty for the death of helpless relatives and deal tow to nightmare creatures with martial arts and all kinds of special spells. The story is told through comic-book style vignettes, as was usually done with these licenses.

Updated visuals

As a remake, Storm Trident worked on updating the game to a more engaging style, replacing “big pixels” with animated characters and settings. The arcade spirit is still preserved and this does not speak well of this overhaul given the results of other games of the same genre that have appeared recently.

More modern animations are added to special abilities, enemy deaths and other graphical details, although overall they seem insufficient. However, its reduced price could “justify” this remake, which we already know would almost amount to rebuilding the game.

The sound is somewhat improved, but the soundtrack seems short for the “neighborhoods” or phases of the game and these end too soon. This results in cuts in the music and a few seconds of silence, which could have been corrected by adjusting the tracks and merging the inputs and outputs.

Insufficient playable features

The main flaw comes from the gameplay, and at first glance, with the different special moves and the variety depending on the character you choose, it looked like it was going to be very entertaining, but in practice it seemed as hard as the original. And that doesn’t speak well of the remake, because there are 16-bit games that are much better done in that aspect.

I found the control clumsy, imprecise, even if we understand immediately. Calmlife loss mechanics using special moves already require adjustment to this one. The game lacks dynamism in combos and better synchronization with the buttons pressed and the actions performed by the characters.

And there are up to 4 different fighters, with their pros and cons, unique abilities and their own combos, giving you a lot of variety to play. But in the end, these differences are not very visible and you have to press buttons and force the special movement to clear the screen.

Duration and pleasure

The title seemed quite short to me, with 7 phases or districts to go through and two special bonus phases very typical of games of this genre at the time. In each district, 2 or more of the most diverse final bosses await us, in addition to requiring all our concentration, but the truth is that the phases do not last too long.

There are 5 difficulty levels and each time we complete a phase or stage it is unlocked at that difficulty and in turn at the simplest ones. If we lose all our lives, we can start from the level we want if it is unlocked, which makes advancement more enjoyable until we get used to the game.

There are unlockables, such as costumes for characters and a way to configure our game in the middle and add even more challenge to the gameplay. Disabilities and restrictions are installed to complicate our lives, so if you like a challenge, don’t hesitate to change the difficulty and add these options.

We can also play with up to 3 additional friends in local mode, but however, the title lacks online options, so it was impossible for me to try this mode.

Conclusions

As a fan of the genre, I was somewhat disappointed with Night Slashers Remake, as it’s almost impossible to make comparisons, and the feeling I got was that I almost would have preferred the pixelated version. From a remake we expect not only a change in the visuals, but also a reform of the animations and gameplay to adapt it to this era.

In short, I experienced a fairly short game, with artificial difficulty inherited from poor controls and fairly simple and repetitive gameplay. I think the combos and some skill mechanics could have been worked on better, by adding more health recharge items, better weapons to throw (they’re a bit disastrous) and slightly denser phases.

Finally, its reduced price and if you have the opportunity to play with someone at home, in addition to wanting to take on challenges of adjustable difficulty, you can go without fear, although there are more titles on the market in tune with current times. This way the game will last longer than the two hours it lasted me.

Night Slashers is available on Xbox OneXbox Series X|S, Playstation 4, Playstation 5, Nintendo Switch and PC