I have played this game in a normal run without any of the bonus areas. I know it says only 5, minutes, but that's because I was beat the game while in places without internet, so forget about that.

CC3 is an empowering jump and shoot game~ If you like doing those two things, this is well worth a run! The fundamental controls mentioned work very well throughout the entire game. The pixel art is colorful and the animation is nice and bouncy. The use of sfx is quite characteristics of the era I believe the game was trying to emulate as well. The soundtrack is alway randomly changing, which keeps the feeling of the game a focus of interest. In a technical sense, jumping-and-shooting is buy-in-large what the game is about, and it might sound as if this would get boring over the course of the many worlds in the game, but the game spaces out the new weapons just right so that by the time you've gotten tired of shooting your old gun, you've got a new toy to enjoy all over again! If anything this just goes to show that the "less-is-more" school of thought on game design can work very well!

I do wish to bring up points of the design that I didn't seem to resonate with. Do keep in mind though, I'm in no way asking you to make any changes, but I do believe that it is important to bring up these kinds of things in a review. Since this is the third game, I will leave suggestions, as I am excited to see what you'll do next.

1) The inventory is not very streamline, and accessing it necessarily slows down the gameplay. Since there are only six items, I would suggest simply putting them all in the initial pause menu, so as to make them instantly accessible.

2) The boss battle design is at odds with what I am conditioned to do when fighting normal enemies. Blitz seems to be the best way to fight enemies. However, trying to do this against bosses has gotten me countless defeats. The bosses are instead designed on a predictable, almost turn based, experience that involves them attacking while it is not safe for you to strike back, but are in a fairly good position to parry, and then waiting for that long winded attack to be over such that you can move in and blast with all you have for a brief moment that the enemy is vulnerable. In theory this difference is interesting, but I just wanted to point out, that all of my encounters with normal enemies has trained me to fight a completely different way, and boss battles betray the logic that I have been conditioned to use in combat.

3) The fundamentals are the best option. The game will grant you a bunch of abilities, like charge shots, and rolling, and changing your weapons, but none of them seem to be viable options in the middle of combat. I found myself a more adequate player when I did nothing but focus on jumping and shooting with the occasional sword slash, rather than try to manage and think about all my options.

My suggestion has to do with both of the 2 mentioned above. I think my main issue with the combat is that I have no control over the enemies. Or rather: I have little to no idea what the enemies are going to do, and when they are going to do that, and this fundamentally makes reaction based play a bad option. Let me give you an example of the opposite, as it appeared twice in the game. There is a point in the game where you have "control" over the Balding Eagle, by being able to determine where he will crash into the ground. There is also a similar "control" that you have over the queen bee. This, to me is exciting, as it make it to where there is a well telegraphed amount of information that I can use for formulate a fun strategy against the enemy. In contrast, I often found the behavior of the Knife Bandit, Smokey, and the Bazooka Hulks to be unpredictable. Sometimes they would pace back-and-forth, sometimes they would turn toward me, and they would attack without warning, sometimes doing so while still moving forward. My suggestion here, would be two things. I think that reaction and strategy can be encouraged if the enemies are designed with attacks that are more telegraphed, a kind of visual cue to let the player know that an attack is coming.

I do have one additional moment of confusion about the enemies. The bazooka hulks shoot green rockets at you and you cannot parry them. When I fought Melvin, and saw him shooting green rockets at me, I must have died 20 times before I figured out that these are different rockets than the Hulks' and instead that this boss battle required the opposite logic of actually parrying the rocket--- This is the kind of thing that I mean when I say that the I am "conditioned" to play in ways that don't work during boss battles.

Rolling is not intuitive. (side note, there is a glitch where you can perform a "wave dash" by hitting roll and then mashing the direction forward, this will let you zoom right past all of the enemies and clear the game in a more pacifist manner) but aside from the wave dash, I could not at any point use the actual roll as a dodge, and a lot of this has to do with the above mentioned lack of encouragement for reaction/strategy based play. But it also has to do with how the controls for the roll demand a few too many steps: 1) keep cally perfectly still on the ground, 2) think of the direction you want to roll, 3) make cally face that direction, but remember that you have to keep her still because she cannot roll when running, 4) mentally figure out which button you have to press to roll, because there is one for each direction 5) press that button to roll.

Indeed, I would oft find myself being chased down by skeletons where I only want to roll back to get behind them, but never have enough time to actually input it, usually instead getting me both run down and hit by a projectile.

My suggestion is this: simplify roll to be a single button, and have it to where you are allowed to roll both forward, and also backwards, while maintaining the direction you are pressing. The controls for this would work like this:
1) if you have a neutral standing position, then you will roll backwards.
2) If you are running, you will roll in the direction you are running.

The result is that it should make rolling a much more reliable option in the middle of combat, and if back-roll maintains the direction you are facing, it could make for some very cool scenarios where in being chased by an enemy, you can just boost behind them while giving them a scattershot to the back.

--------------------------------------------------

There is one additional thing I have to mention that confused me. The story, as presented in the game, leaves a bit too much to the imagination for someone who isn't familiar with the CC franchise. I'm talking about the little things, as in, I don't understand what Herbert's motive is for kidnapping Cally's Parents, or the significance of some of the bosses, that seem to be something that Cally is familiar with, but I am not. I am told that there is some additional explanation for the story by Robin and Melvin if you go out of your way to do things more than the main game. But clearing the game vinella on my first run, left a lot of questions in the air for me.

But, being the student of art that I am, I had to try to come up with something to make sense of it all. So here is the theory I came up with.

*Spoilers ahead*
*Spoilers ahead*
*Spoilers ahead*
*Spoilers ahead*

Herbert is interesting in that he seems to have a soft spot for Cally in addition to Rupert.

The Rupert soft-spot is takes the form of that in the final level, through the level design, it is shown that there are two assets repeating the cave, a self-portrait bust statue of Herbert, and a family photograph. What this says to me is that there are 2 things that Herbert is willing to admit that have meaning to him, himself and Rupert.

As for his fondness for Cally. The first thing is that he talks at Cally as if she doesn't mean anything to her, or that she is a swor

I have played this game in a normal run without any of the bonus areas. I know it says only 5, minutes, but that's because I was beat the game while in places without internet, so forget about that. CC3 is an empowering jump and shoot game~ If you like doing those two things, this is well worth a run! The fundamental controls mentioned work very well throughout the entire game. The pixel art is colorful and the animation is nice and bouncy. The use of sfx is quite characteristics of the era I believe the game was trying to emulate as well. The soundtrack is alway randomly changing, which keeps the feeling of the game a focus of interest. In a technical sense, jumping-and-shooting is buy-in-large what the game is about, and it might sound as if this would get boring over the course of the many worlds in the game, but the game spaces out the new weapons just right so that by the time you've gotten tired of shooting your old gun, you've got a new toy to enjoy all over again! If anything this just goes to show that the "less-is-more" school of thought on game design can work very well! I do wish to bring up points of the design that I didn't seem to resonate with. Do keep in mind though, I'm in no way asking you to make any changes, but I do believe that it is important to bring up these kinds of things in a review. Since this is the third game, I will leave suggestions, as I am excited to see what you'll do next. 1) The inventory is not very streamline, and accessing it necessarily slows down the gameplay. Since there are only six items, I would suggest simply putting them all in the initial pause menu, so as to make them instantly accessible. 2) The boss battle design is at odds with what I am conditioned to do when fighting normal enemies. Blitz seems to be the best way to fight enemies. However, trying to do this against bosses has gotten me countless defeats. The bosses are instead designed on a predictable, almost turn based, experience that involves them attacking while it is not safe for you to strike back, but are in a fairly good position to parry, and then waiting for that long winded attack to be over such that you can move in and blast with all you have for a brief moment that the enemy is vulnerable. In theory this difference is interesting, but I just wanted to point out, that all of my encounters with normal enemies has trained me to fight a completely different way, and boss battles betray the logic that I have been conditioned to use in combat. 3) The fundamentals are the best option. The game will grant you a bunch of abilities, like charge shots, and rolling, and changing your weapons, but none of them seem to be viable options in the middle of combat. I found myself a more adequate player when I did nothing but focus on jumping and shooting with the occasional sword slash, rather than try to manage and think about all my options. My suggestion has to do with both of the 2 mentioned above. I think my main issue with the combat is that I have no control over the enemies. Or rather: I have little to no idea what the enemies are going to do, and when they are going to do that, and this fundamentally makes reaction based play a bad option. Let me give you an example of the opposite, as it appeared twice in the game. There is a point in the game where you have "control" over the Balding Eagle, by being able to determine where he will crash into the ground. There is also a similar "control" that you have over the queen bee. This, to me is exciting, as it make it to where there is a well telegraphed amount of information that I can use for formulate a fun strategy against the enemy. In contrast, I often found the behavior of the Knife Bandit, Smokey, and the Bazooka Hulks to be unpredictable. Sometimes they would pace back-and-forth, sometimes they would turn toward me, and they would attack without warning, sometimes doing so while still moving forward. My suggestion here, would be two things. I think that reaction and strategy can be encouraged if the enemies are designed with attacks that are more telegraphed, a kind of visual cue to let the player know that an attack is coming. I do have one additional moment of confusion about the enemies. The bazooka hulks shoot green rockets at you and you cannot parry them. When I fought Melvin, and saw him shooting green rockets at me, I must have died 20 times before I figured out that these are different rockets than the Hulks' and instead that this boss battle required the opposite logic of actually parrying the rocket--- This is the kind of thing that I mean when I say that the I am "conditioned" to play in ways that don't work during boss battles. Rolling is not intuitive. (side note, there is a glitch where you can perform a "wave dash" by hitting roll and then mashing the direction forward, this will let you zoom right past all of the enemies and clear the game in a more pacifist manner) but aside from the wave dash, I could not at any point use the actual roll as a dodge, and a lot of this has to do with the above mentioned lack of encouragement for reaction/strategy based play. But it also has to do with how the controls for the roll demand a few too many steps: 1) keep cally perfectly still on the ground, 2) think of the direction you want to roll, 3) make cally face that direction, but remember that you have to keep her still because she cannot roll when running, 4) mentally figure out which button you have to press to roll, because there is one for each direction 5) press that button to roll. Indeed, I would oft find myself being chased down by skeletons where I only want to roll back to get behind them, but never have enough time to actually input it, usually instead getting me both run down and hit by a projectile. My suggestion is this: simplify roll to be a single button, and have it to where you are allowed to roll both forward, and also backwards, while maintaining the direction you are pressing. The controls for this would work like this: 1) if you have a neutral standing position, then you will roll backwards. 2) If you are running, you will roll in the direction you are running. The result is that it should make rolling a much more reliable option in the middle of combat, and if back-roll maintains the direction you are facing, it could make for some very cool scenarios where in being chased by an enemy, you can just boost behind them while giving them a scattershot to the back. -------------------------------------------------- There is one additional thing I have to mention that confused me. The story, as presented in the game, leaves a bit too much to the imagination for someone who isn't familiar with the CC franchise. I'm talking about the little things, as in, I don't understand what Herbert's motive is for kidnapping Cally's Parents, or the significance of some of the bosses, that seem to be something that Cally is familiar with, but I am not. I am told that there is some additional explanation for the story by Robin and Melvin if you go out of your way to do things more than the main game. But clearing the game vinella on my first run, left a lot of questions in the air for me. But, being the student of art that I am, I had to try to come up with something to make sense of it all. So here is the theory I came up with. *Spoilers ahead* *Spoilers ahead* *Spoilers ahead* *Spoilers ahead* Herbert is interesting in that he seems to have a soft spot for Cally in addition to Rupert. The Rupert soft-spot is takes the form of that in the final level, through the level design, it is shown that there are two assets repeating the cave, a self-portrait bust statue of Herbert, and a family photograph. What this says to me is that there are 2 things that Herbert is willing to admit that have meaning to him, himself and Rupert. As for his fondness for Cally. The first thing is that he talks at Cally as if she doesn't mean anything to her, or that she is a swor