For years I have wanted a decent arcade beat em up like the good old days, Mega Cat Studios has made that happen with their latest release, Coffee Crisis.
You play as one of two characters in game, Nick or Ashley, both working their shift in the coffee shop when the earth gets attacked by Aliens who want to steal Metal Music, all the coffee (yuk) cat videos and the WiFi! For those achievement whores among us this game is perfect to balance out odd number Gamer score as every single achievement is worth 22G. Though part of me wants to get all the achievements I am enjoying being back to 5 and 0 on the Gamer score! There is plenty of enemies on each level to beat up, including old ladies, old men (at least they are not sexist) and wheelchair bound aliens who resemble Professor X complete with mind powers, of course most of the enemies are just possessed by the Aliens so you are technically just defending yourself and not just beating up the older generation for the fun of it! However dark that may seem it is great fun. There are a lot of power ups, and automatic mods that change the flow of play.
Just like Streets of Rage you get weapons and health pick ups as you go along allowing you to do more damage and stay in the action. There are a few weapons to choose from such as swords and bats but one of my favorite weapons has to be the Alien arm holding another Alien arm, which then fires a fireball doing massive damage to the enemies. There are several difficulties to choose from, however the game can be quite overwhelming even on easy at times due to the amount of enemies on the screen, but on higher difficulties you will find you will die quite a lot, though I find the jump kick move works well. Verdict
Coffee Crisis, though I can’t stand coffee at all and I strongly believe it should be renamed as Tea Crisis! I think it is a very well made game, it has amazing music (well if you love metal), and the game play is a nostalgia dream, complete with the retro graphics and with the ability to buy the game for the Sega Mega Drive / Genesis it makes it feel like a classic, it does kind of suck that it is only available in the US at the moment (the reproduction carts are region free) however once it comes to the UK (assuming it does) I strongly suggest buying the game straight away!
Developer: Mega Cat Studios Publisher: E360 Technologies LLC Release Date: 15th August 2018 (US) Price: $10.99 File Size: 811.2 MB Xbox One copy provided for review purposes
Available on: Steam, Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and Sega Genesis / Mega Drive (via Region Free Reproduction Cartridge)