Review: Astyanax Remix

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Googie must have been asleep at the wheel for Rent, because it’s actually not difficult at all. It’s basically a repeat of Inazumi, only going downward instead of upward this time. Notice how on this level if you fall down a pit you simply land on a platform. Even if you fall what seems like 50 ft, you just land on a platform with no problem. Don’t you just love the consistency? The mini-boss is some sort of man of stone.

 Sieg Heil!

Apparently he is also a member of the Nazi party because his attacks consist mainly of hopping up and down while doing the Sieg Heil salute. After dispatching some sort of insect-brain monster, we learn that Blackhorn is smacking the princess around while getting high on a blunt. Is he really a Wizard or is he actually a pimp? It’s hard to tell sometimes. His odd undead companion also gets high.

This guy can inhale?

 How a lungless undead skeleton smokes a joint is a mystery. Probably we’ll never know. Maybe its actually just some goon in a skeleton mask who believes himself to be undead. It would explain a lot.

Astyanax then marches onward through Marshy and Grave. Holy fucking balls, prepare to swear like a sailor, because Marshy is so fucking ridiculously difficult that your choices are either swear it out, break your controller in a rage, or have an aneurism. Even with save states being used practically every step, Marshy is one shade below absolutely impossible. There is an endless stream of flying fish, floating eyeballs, and fish-men who pop up out of the water at you. And one hit is all it takes to knock you into the water, which is instant death. I will say this though, Googie sure did make the colors nicer here, now it actually looks like a swamp rather than a neon purple hodge-podge of tiles.

Before 

After 

After all that bullshit the boss is just a skeleton. It has more life, but fuck, how many times are they going to recycle that graphic?

So the boss is normal colored skeleton? 

Grave is yet another series of death pits you have to somehow navigate while being endlessly attacked from all sides. And once again it uses all the same old enemies only colored different. The only new addition is that now for no apparent reason butterflies are also attacking Astyanax. That must be Cuties doing.

Would you bury your dead here? 

What I want to know is what kind of fuckwit puts graves in an inaccessible area of sheer cliffs and pissed off monsters. The boss resembles a cross between a deer and the roots of a tree, and it hurls hockey pucks which sprout into vines at you.

 What an ugly bastard

After cutting this peculiar enemy down, we are told that we are finally almost there. At this point I can only hope the nightmare of endless pits is almost over, I’m starting to hallucinate about ET on the Atari 2600.

Astyanax's primary influence 

To get to Blackhorn’s castle, first we must make it through Telugamn and Cliff. Telugamn is just a shell-shocked blur as Astyanax once again faces up against the same enemies from the previous levels only colored differently, and continuously gets knocked into the water, which is exactly the same as a pit. There isn’t even a splash.

New colors does not equal new enemies 

I don’t know how I made it through this level, it must have been grim determination and a few hundred loaded save states. I think I was attacked by a bird and cat and then a cat-bird at the end.

In the aptly named Cliff stage of the game, you hop your way up a cliff which has cages carved into it. Some of the cages have identical faceless men in them who stare out. Presumably they are watching the dancing slime-creatures.

Get down! 

Cliff really isn’t that tough. I’d even say its reasonable. This may be the one level in this game a regular guy could get through without cheating. Too bad he’d never even know this level exists having given up in disgust on level 1! The boss is another Nazi Stone-Man. But guess what? This time the Stone-man is a different color. I mean really, no one will notice that it’s the same graphic being used over and over again if it’s a different color. Brilliant move Jaleco.

At this point Princess Rosebud bosses Astyanax around.

You're in no position to make demands 

Castle Thelenea is a maze of different colored doors. In the original Astyanax this was a confusing level, but at least it had no pits. Now there are plenty of pits, because heavens knows the one thing Astyanax needed was even more pits!

 Fucking hell!

At the end of the castle Astyanax faces the Wizard’s right hand skeleton. He informs us that princess Rosebud is to be a sex toy to Blackhorn.

Why am I trying to prevent this? 

Which quite frankly suited me just fine. But fighting this death-fearing blunt-smoking corpse was inevitable. Strangely his in-game graphic bears absolutely no resemblance to his cut-scenes. I think they must have photo-shopped those, face-to-face he looks more like a prune.

 How is this the same chap?

After his destruction, he has just enough energy left to insult you based on an ethnicity you don’t belong to, and cast a spell which will cause you to die with him.

Not content with merely being undead he is also racist 

Cutie sacrifices her life so that you can live on. I say it serves her right for hijacking you into this hell-hole of a world anyway. All that’s left now is to go through Tower and fight Blackhorn.

Like in just about every other game of this sort ever made, you must first re-fight the mini-bosses, one after another, before getting to the big guy. This shows an alarming degree of stupidity on Blackhorn’s part. Why not have them all gang up on Astyanax? It did get the lazy graphic designers of this game yet another way to re-use the same graphics again. It’s OK though, they were different colored this time… I was shocked to find that Googie left this level alone. Did you run out of pits?

Did you decorate this room yourself? Not too shabby... 

Fitting yet another stereotype for this sort of game, once you defeat Blackhorn he has another form he turns into. In a shocking turn of events, (assuming you’ve never played a video-game before) it is a dragon!

Lets put our weak point right in the front of our chest, brilliant strategy! 

Although Blackthorn is somewhat difficult to defeat, he is nothing at all compared to all the pits on the way here.

The original Astyanax was a game in which a 16 year old man actually turns down pussy at the end because his mommy and daddy might be worried about him. That’s pathetic. He has to be in the closet. In this remix though, things are a little, well, different. Take a look:

So this is what I fought so hard for? I'm speechless... 

That’s right, after finally making my way through this game, no mean feat even when cheating, my reward is a freaky princess who wants to bugger me with many sex toys? Fucking hell! I should at least get to see her naked!

The gods had some pity on poor Astyanax though, he gets home to find Cutie now in his world.

So, when is the sequel?

Somewhere out there some poor unsuspecting dupe downloaded Astyanax Remix thinking he was getting an improved version of Astyanax, only to be sucked into a world of blunt-smoking skeletons, cock-teasing fairies, and a princess who is hot to peg you with a strap-on. Astyanax Remix, you are such a trickster!

(uknown, 2007)