Berserk Boy is legally the love child of Sonic the Hedgehog and Mega Man X, given how fondly it emulates the Blue Blur’s high-speed dash and Dorky Mega’s various power-changing outfits. That anatomically intricate relationship is enticing in itself, but even if those retro action-platformers register as historical relics in your memory, Berserk Boy does enough that it’s modern and engaging that it doesn’t have to rely on mimicking its inspirations. My only gripe is that the credits rolled before I had a chance to test out my newfound robot-smashing muscles.
As is often the case with retro-inspired platformers, there’s not much to spoil here. Our hero is part of the Resistance against evil robots, manifestations of dim energy, and a “rebuilding the world anew” plot played out by a grinning anime scientist. That is, until the day he comes face to face with one of five Berserk Balls (Chaos Emeralds, Infinity Stones, take your pick), which are basically supernatural MacGuffins that give our Boy elemental suits with various powers attached to them.
These suits, which you can switch between on the fly, actually give you different ways to jump, attack, and traverse previously inaccessible spaces in previous levels. For example, the Flame Drill suit lets you burrow into the ground to avoid incoming damage and bypass gaps too tight for a boy with a straight spine. The Ice Kunai suit can throw projectiles and stick to certain surfaces. The Mine Buster reveals hidden platforms and can make breakable walls go boom.
But my favorite is the Berserk Boy launch suit, which lets you fly through 15 levels with an electrically charged jump. When that jump hits an enemy, you can jump again in midair. And when you chain that move together enough times, it feels almost like an unstoppable electric current destroying enemies that after a moment, they register in my mind as platforms—no, jump restorers—as opposed to solemn threats.
Platforming in each suit strikes a complex balance between testing both your last-second reflexes and your quick-fire problem-solving skills. However, Berserk Boy’s best moments come when you’re forced to mix and match each suit. Punch through enemies, transform, deactivate kunai lasers, transform, grind on a rail, drill into a wall, and… breathe. Again, there’s a real cheerful rush in combining each suit’s distinct movesets.
While some of the corridors require some skill to get through, I really like that the game lets you choose which one best suits (ha!) your mood. Combat in particular can be crushed with either suit, so it really comes down to whether you prefer to keep your distance with a kunai, get up close with fire slashes, or just fly over enemies while you have the Soaring Wind suit.
The costume changes have their biggest impact when you’re replaying previous levels, using all of your modern abilities on stages that should be familiar. Replaying stages to get collectibles and other stuff can be tedious even in the best platformers, especially when you get to the tricky, flashback-inducing sections. In Berserk Boy, however, getting past a particularly tricky obstacle course is as basic as flying over it in your modern wind suit, making backtracking a piece of cake for other collectibles enthusiasts too indolent to replay the same perfect jumps twice.
What’s more transformative are the things that are modern when you revisit a level, or rather, the sections that were previously inaccessible because you hadn’t yet unlocked the right suit. That impossibly wide gap? Now you can fly over it. That locked yellow door? Blow it off its hinges with the Mine Buster. My eyes were glued to the edges of the screen during subsequent playthroughs, searching for secrets and hidden paths, and the reward for that effort is so satisfying.
Berserk Boy does encounter some minor obstacles during these replays, though. (I say minor because the stages only last between four and ten minutes at a time.) I expected these secret sections to be a more complex challenge, testing everything I’d learned in my pursuit of all the suits, but the game instead seems content to recycle similar obstacles into every nook and cranny. For example, it can take you a minute to figure out what to do the first time you come across a spiky crawlspace. Fifth time? You already know you need to dig into the ground with a Flame Drill, and the game doesn’t remix that obstacle to make it a more active, mind-bending challenge at any point. And the same can be said for other obstacles, where you’re constantly memorizing the right ability to block the way.
Speaking of secrets, each level also contains secret Resistance fighters you can rescue, unlocking special timed stages that, thankfully, focus solely on high-speed platforming—combining dashes, jumps, and fire whirlwinds—to achieve faster times.
Berserk Boy truly sings as you tear through stages with unstoppable force, while gorgeous pixel art blurs like streetlights as you speed through a car. This frenetic energy is only amplified by the hyper-catchy theme song, which was composed by Sonic Mania composer Tee Lopes. But with so much variety in the moveset and so much potential for tense, fast-paced gameplay, I was a little disappointed that the credits rolled after six hours without a chance to fully exploit everything I had sort of mastered. The main stages didn’t push me to my limits, nor did the time trial stages I’d conquered so far, which slowly wore off after I’d gotten a taste of what was possible.
Regardless, Berserk Boy is a cheerful action platformer that makes Sonic’s high speeds readable and Mega Man’s unlockable powers genuinely invigorating. There’s a real fondness for those beloved games – even the occasional run ‘n’ gun vehicle section – but more importantly, this one never feels like a flat rehash of what came before. None of the levels were challenging enough for my taste, which may be a matter of skill, although if my biggest criticism is that I simply want more, then I guess that’s a pretty promising sign.
This review is based on a test version of the game provided by publisher Berserk Boy Games.
