Meet Harvey, the star of a new downloadable game called Replay: VHS is Not Dead. Harvey is just an unassuming average guy who must live in the 80’s or early 90’s, as his favorite thing to do after work is go to the movie rental place and rent lots of tapes to pop into his VCR at home.  Of course, he may also go to that store to see that cute blue-haired girl behind the counter that he likes.  Anyway, one day while renting movies, the lady clerk gives him a remote control along with his rented tapes for some reason.  And on the way home, he gets struck by some weird lightning and manages to survive.  At home, with his VCR tapes still glowing with energy, he still puts them in the VCR and uses the remote control, but then gets sucked into his TV and is stuck in the movies he rented!  Now you must help him and the stars of the movies reach the end so he can escape in this retro-styled 2-D puzzle platformer.  It’s available to download for most of the current gen consoles and PCs, but reviewed on Wii U here.

In the game, you control Harvey and any other characters in the movies he’s in. In each level, you must get them to a special spot that has a film reel with their face on it, and when everyone is at their spot at the same time, you finish the level. Harvey and most of the other characters have the same skills.  You can move left and right, jump, step on switches, and push blocks.  Later on you’ll meet characters that can go through walls or fit into smaller spaces.  Now here’s the gimmick of the game.  At any time you can rewind what you just did, and then switch to another character.  The person that you controlled previously will still play out their moves from before, so your job is to figure out how to make all the characters move and work together so everyone can reach their goal.  It’s a little hard to wrap your head around the concept at first, but once you play a few levels you’ll get the general idea.

Hidden in each level is a key. Collect enough keys and finish their respective levels to unlock super-duper hard bonus levels.  Complete those to unlock goodies like character bios and alternate outfits.  The game does a great job of parodying classic movies.  There are four tapes for you to visit, and the first one is called Corsairs of the Canaries (a pirate stage).  Next you have Star Trip VII: Wrath of the Glubons (sci-fi), then it’s Tuesday the 31^st: A Nightmare in Transylvania (horror movie spoof).  And then finally it’s Nevada Johnson and the Trident of Neptune (Indiana Jones ripoff).  When you beat the boss at the end of each movie, you earn a token that you can use to skip a level if you can’t figure it out.  Complete the level to get your token back.  You can also earn medals for each stage depending on how fast you complete them.

The main problem that I had with the game is that it takes a lot of trial and error at first to figure out the levels, and if you get in another character’s way, you could mess up their path, resulting in having to rewind and start again. You’ll have to rewind and start over lots of times and remember the path of each character, which can also be tricky.  But I still liked the creative puzzles and the 16-bit styled retro graphics.  Reminds me of stuff I’d rent for the SNES back in the day, like The Lost Vikings.  And the humor is pretty fun, too.  So if you like tricky and tough puzzle platform challenges, you may want to check this game out.

Kid Factor:

Replay: VHS is Not Dead is rated E for Everyone with ESRB descriptors of Mild Fantasy Violence, Alcohol Reference, and Mild Language. If you get hit by an obstacle or enemy, you’ll just fizzle out electronically, and you can just rewind and come back to life and start over.  I think the only alcohol reference I could find was in the pirate level when they talk about grog.  And the bad language must be used very sparingly in the text because I didn’t notice anything.  Really I think this game is best enjoyed by older kids.  One, reading skill is a must as everything is text based.  Two, the game is pretty tough and I think younger kids would have a harder time figuring the puzzles out without help.  And finally, I think a lot of the humor would be lost on the smaller crowd, as I bet most of them have never seen a VCR tape or a movie rental store.

Tags: Game Reviews