Replay: VHS is not Dead Review

"Be Kind, Rewind"

Campaign

This guy decided to rent some VHS tapes during a night and on the way home was struck by lightning. Later on his home to goes to play the tapes and then gets sucked into the tv world. It immediately starts with this poor guy awakening in the first movie about pirates where he quickly gets caught up to the situation by one of the movie personalities and it begins. The game is split into multiple worlds which are each a separate VHS tape world and then you play the levels within to continue. There are also skip tokens unlocked by playing through the game if any level might be too hard for you to progress. The levels are usually quick to do and just require you to manipulate the world by playing one character, then rewinding to another. The game even features a number of characters at once eventually which can be confusing and great at the same time with so rewinds happening at once. It features some simple level designs though it's got interesting mechanics to make your way through the levels as you may need to rewind a couple times to solve them. Things can also get much more complicated in the later stages so it may take you awhile to figure what's needed to complete the levels. There are even some boss fights which require you to balance survival with puzzle solving as well. Levels also have keys to be found as collectibles and medals to achieve based on your time of completion in the level.

Gameplay

The game is styled in pixel graphics which look nice and do emulate the scenes quite well. It has very basic controls as you just hop your way through the levels and then rewind to take control of another character. The puzzles were well done with some challenges present in some more than others and options to skip them if needed. Levels move quickly usually taking a couple minutes at most to complete, but it might vary depending on how stuck you get. The levels also each had their own charm to them capturing the movies they aim to spoof and there's some good comedy mixed in there as well.

The Conclusion

Replay: VHS is not Dead is a solid puzzle platformer that brings some unique gameplay mechanics into play. It's really satisfying when you do get the multiple characters to sync up and it works well. There are a number of levels available to play, intricate bosses to take out and interesting takes on classic movies that make up each world area. In total the game provides seventy total levels across the four different movie based universes. The graphics also look great with the pixel art being well done and doing a great job of creating the levels they aim to mock. The game does a great job of presenting the unique mechanics well and it's great to see it come out to play with multiple characters at once.

Replay: VHS is not Dead Review on Xbox One
Review Code Provided by E-Neko

Rating Overall: 7.8