Timing Hero: Big Contents in Little Pixels – Review

The great thing about the old handheld games is that they were FUN more than anything else. Sure, they had their share of shortcomings. Like that 8-bit music that your mom said to gives her headaches (and it kinda does now that you are older even though you don’t want to admit it); the graphic that might as well be an imaginary friend because nobody else will get it other than the people who are involved in the relationship; and the somewhat primitive gameplay. But it was fun, goddammit. Back in my days, games did not need a character with hot booty that blink through time nor asked me to press X to pay respect. It had imagination of the players and that was good enough.

Timing Hero, by Buff Studio, is the reincarnation of those games that you played on your shitty handheld “GameBoy”. There is no color other than those various shades of swampy green; it has that music that bores into your skull because it plays through an intensive battle, every battles really, that you are keep messing up even though you know how to do the fight. The game is all about that muscle memory and reflex. No puzzles, no quests, no nothing. But yet, it is fun, addictive and most of all, nostalgic.

The game has surprising amount of contents for a game with such as simple plot. Bad thing happened to the kingdom, now go kill the bad things! An even simpler gameplay. Press a button in time to dodge and smash the attack button. Three different game modes. Loads of unlockable characters with various skill sets and level up/equipment system. Furthermore, to my surprise, each characters have their own ratio of stat and class advancements. Although this is nothing new in a RPG game, it is refreshingly surprising to see such a great attention to the details in a mobile game.

Arguably, this is just a simple game that only has two moves: dodge and attack (well and skills too but you know). It does not have any groundbreaking new ideas or concept. I fact, that is opposite of what this game is about and it does it so well. Timing Hero is all about that good ol’ time when you enjoyed playing games, no matter how simple it looked. Because you know games like this always have much to  discover and load of fun while doing it.