Fenix Rage Review (PC)

As I jump to my death for the umpteenth time in Fenix Rage, after barely dodging the Grim Reaper in a testing sequence of jumps and dashes, only to have my progress reset and start it all over again, I cannot help but ask myself why anyone would subject themselves to this.

As indie platformers are unfortunately considered a dime a dozen, developers have to struggle to create something new within the confines of the genre in order to stand out from the growing crowd.

One of the ways through which this is done is by amping up the difficulty to absurd levels of magnitude. This allows gamers to get more play time out of the product, while enabling developers to cut a lot of costs when it comes to level creation.

You can basically spend more than half an hour within the confines of two screens' worth of level, without being put off by the fact that there is no roof, no floor, and everything looks as if it were made for a computer game, and not created as an actual world.

That is also one of the high points of the genre. You get so focused on mechanical perfection that you don't even care about that anymore, and things start making much more sense. Of course, everything is created to kill you. Of course, you die whenever you touch anything.

The design is meant to evoke a certain feeling of relentlessness in you, up to a point where you stop thinking about the game in terms of controls and mechanics and achieve a certain Zen flow that enables you to confidently make your way through the levels.

Typical level. Pretty perilous

Gameplay

The plot is pretty straightforward: Fenix's village gets blown up, leaving only him and a shadowy villain named Oktarus standing.

You embark on a journey to track down the antagonist, taking you through nine different worlds and challenging you with countless hazards and deadly bosses.

To sum it up in one sentence, Fenix Rage feels like a crossbreed of Flappy Bird and Super Meat Boy.

The controls are as simple as it gets for a platformer, you can move laterally, jump and dash. However, you can double jump and dash infinitely, which means that in many sections you'll be hanging in mid-air, waiting for a slight window of opportunity, while trying not to overextend and jump into a nearby creep. And you'll fail.

Fortunately, you respawn instantaneously, so there's not time to lose when you meet your death. There is also no time for mourning, just for a resolute retry, with your nerves further bent and your determination thoroughly tested.

“To sum it up in one sentence, Fenix Rage feels like a crossbreed of Flappy Bird and Super Meat Boy.”

Initially I thought that the overpowered movement would turn out to be the game's downfall. Not at all. It's just something to give you a fighting chance.

Developer Green Lava Studios managed to capitalize on the freedom of movement by creating interesting levels that oftentimes border on complete chaos.

In many levels everything is moving, and with those tiny green blobs of death, some of them static, others pacing back and forth, going into and out of portals, it all seems like a madman's contraption.

At its best, Fenix Rage makes you serene and patient, oblivious to the dangers at your flank, while you set your eyes on the goal and deftly navigate the level, with precise timing and the experience of previous tries interwoven in a stepping stone that lets you achieve progress and exit the level unscathed.

At its worst, you'll feel like it all comes down to blind luck rather than a masterful deconstruction of enemy movement patterns, static hazards and level layouts, one that enables you to see an esoteric golden path that would be unattainable for the uninitiated. And you'll feel like taking a bite out of your keyboard.

Cue in bad Mr. Freeze puns

You have to play quick, think and react within impossible time frames, and you will often find yourself staring at the screen, struggling to see the elusive pattern that should take you to the end, trying to make sense of all the moving parts.

Things start off slow, allowing you to get comfortable and learn, but the difficulty curve quickly spikes, as more and more things are added in each level. You can break some walls by dashing, for instance, but frozen ones can only be broken when you're on fire.

There are portals that allow you to jump from place to place instantaneously, but they do the same for your enemies, so you'll have to figure out the proper time to jump in, lest you are killed by a traveling death amoeba.

Trial and error and proper planning go a long way towards achieving your goal, but unfortunately, some bits just feel really unfair, and you'll find yourself retreading the same tedious path time and time again, trying to gleam some useful information in the blink of an eye, only to die over and over to the same obstacle.

Eventually, you'll be able to get through, but it'll only be a matter of statistics, trial #54, half a centimeter to the right, with an extra hesitant pause before the last jump, barely making the narrow window without any sort of planning, just brute force and determination.

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Sound and visuals

The game's sound design is monotonous and unexciting, and you'll phase out the stale and repetitive musical score while failing over and over and trying to regain your focus.

The music just failed to capture me, in spite of it having the potential to do so, being a neat mesh of chiptune and guitar riffs, with a nice rhythm that gives you a driving impulse when playing.

The visuals are very flashy, obnoxiously so, with neon colors constantly assaulting your eyeballs. They're not bad, but they're not very good either, due to the barrage of colors and the lack of variety.

The game world is forever bathed in a purple-reddish twilight, and brightly colored blocks on that background can be a little tiring.

That, coupled with the lack of variety in monster types, makes for a rather disappointing visual experience. You basically get the same green / black blob copy-pasted over and over again, moving in a straight line or jumping in place, and it gets a little annoying after a while.

However, the different worlds have their own themes, which means that you'll regularly get a change of color palette and environments, and there are also some neat touches, such as the brief story animations, that add to the experience.

Unfortunately, overall, it has the aesthetic of an old Flash game, and none of the gravitas of something like Super Meat Boy. A touch of personality would have done the game a whole lot of good.

The Good

The Bad

Conclusion