88 Heroes Review

-Gregg Dietz
Reviews Editor

Not many games have such a unique and weird idea as 88 Heroes. The simple yet complicated premise of 88 Heroes is to finish 88 levels in 88 minutes with 88 seconds each level. The complicated part is not knowing which of the various 88 heroes you will get once another dies. Bitmap Bureau and Rising Star Games want you to laugh and be frustrated at the same time here, I'll explain why.

With 88 unique characters, it becomes borderline impossible to plan how you will attack each level. Now the levels aren't procedurally generated so you will learn the layout as you play again and again. The difficulty curve is all in the heroes.

Now I can't get passed the second handful of stages because either I'm awful at it or its just that tough. So I can't account for the last 50 stages but I can say that what I played is something you don't see in platformers. When other platformers design their levels, it's usually made for a single character or up to 4 total. They had to make 88 levels for 88 randomly chosen characters. It makes for a very frustrating experience after the initial novelty has worn off.

The character design and the writing are by far the best features here. The writing while simple, is very funny. Having the villain always on screen, commenting on your performance is actually quite entertaining. Now of course this also counts as one of the obstacles as his minions will run by and block some of the screen. There are 2 other game modes that allow you to chose 8 very specific heroes or just one hero, this makes the game a bit easier but they must be unlocked and its still very tough.

And now we talk about the 88 heroes. I'm not going to run down each character because the best thing about your first play through is seeing them for the first time. I will say that just about every hero is a parody of something in pop culture and that genuinely tickled my funny bone. There are a few that are just simply silly and they are great.
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Overall the game is mostly a gimmick with 88 comedic characters but is also a pretty fun and challenging platformer. The best way to play this would be to get a friend and swap the controller upon each death and see how far you can get. With all that being said, I give 88 Heroes an 8 out of 10 (unironically).

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