I’m not sure how I get myself into these sorts of positions. Maybe it has to do with looking for games that remind me of my youth, maybe its because I love to explore Steam and find “weird” games that don’t normally get talked about. Power Stealers is the sort of title that ticks all the boxes for checking out.
Power Stealers sets out to try and bring us back to the past (I’m not going to finish that statement), where games are much simpler and much more action-oriented. A time when you popped in a game, hit start and were right into the action. Such a different world we live in when I pop in a game and have to go out to dinner so it can spend the next hour or so updating.
The thing that grabbed me about Power Stealers was the Contra look and feel from the screenshots available. With the disappointment that was the new Contra (I can’t even remember the name it was so bad), I was looking for something to satiate my need to classic run-and-gun. Power Stealers at the very least nailed the look and I was looking for a fix. I know, I have a problem.
The game plays as one might expect. You run to the right and blast everything in your way with a variety of weapons that you pick-up via boxes scattered or dropped from above. This is Contra and initially hooked me. Controls are simple if more than a little lacking. I didn’t have my Xbox 360 wired controller at my desk so I just played the game using the keyboard. Talk about reliving the past and those days of DOS-era gaming.
But it’s here where the game’s problems become wholly apparent. Controls aren’t given to you when you start the game. I love being dropped into a game quickly as much as the next guy, but since this is a keyboard setup you’d expect at least a quick button layout. It’s like one of those shovelware C64 games that had you hunting around the keyboard trying to figure out what keys do what.
This wouldn’t be terrible on a gamepad as a game like Power Stealers only uses three buttons (I think?) and it’s easier to figure things out on your own with gamepads having fewer buttons than a keyboard. But you can’t use a full gamepad, by this I mean the D-pad doesn’t work, so the keyboard is your best option for precise control. I have no idea how something like this happens and maybe you’re wondering if you can change things in the settings? Well, you can’t as there aren’t and setting at all.
Power Stealers plays like an arcade title where your only option is to hit start on the menu and play until you run out of quarters. Well, I say run out, but you have unlimited continues so even a baby could finish this game given enough time. The game bills itself as challenging, and it might be, but having endless continues sort of removes the challenge. In the first stage, I tried as hard as if I want to try to beat Contra on a single life, but once I died I gave up as there was no punishment for dying.
This is a shame as while not as hard as any of the Contra games, Power Stealers could have been a nice little challenge. This is all spread out across five stages that while all unique and colorful, have some serious pacing issues. You might scroll right at a nice pace, blasting enemies and pickup up power-ups, but then you will load into segments that last a matter of seconds.
What sucks is that these small sections don’t offer anything different from the normal section and only serve to confuse you. Is this a new stage? Am I about to find a boss? Did I uncover a secret bonus area? It’s all just so disjointed and these segments only serve to break up the gameplay, something you don’t want happening in a game of this nature. You want to run and gun until you hit a boss.
And Power Stealers does feature a few bosses, some of them looking and acting pretty neat. But the lack of threat levels them all falling flat. I usually just stood in a single spot and held the fire button until they died since I was essentially playing on “god” mode. And then there’s the story which does little to tie anything together. I know I shouldn’t expect Shakespeare with this one, but I need something, or at the very least to not question if the final boss was the final boss. And the mecha-gorilla boss sure feels familiar.
The story is told right at the start and sees your two characters get some sort of message that a bad gun is doing bad stuff. This comes via text boxes featuring character profiles that aren’t inside said text box. It’s also done what looks to be the most generic font possible. Sans Serif doesn’t feel very strong of futuristic.
And I mentioned that there are two characters because Power Stealers offers local co-op. I have no idea how this works as one-player controls are laid out all across the keyboard. I imagine it’s like playing a finger version of Twister. But the worst thing is that you can’t choose the character you want to play the game with. Player one will always get the male character. At least each gets a robot buddy that serves as an alt-fire which is sort of unique.
It’s not like the female character looks all that different (she has a ponytail) or played differently, but I’m the sort of person that always selects the female character first in any game where one is presented to me. The heart in Power Stealers is there but it lacks all the details for it to be something even competent. You can only get so far with this pixel-art style. It’s the sort of game that looks amazing in screenshots but doesn’t work so well in motion.
Thankfully the game wasn’t released in a broken state. You can play it in a single sitting without much issue outside of a few glitches. Collision problems abound and if a box is broken in the air it sometimes becomes a glitchy platform that can get you stuck. Enemies are placed at random and this can often get you stuck in a death cycle until you can continue as move on thanks to the temporary invincibility you get.
Power Stealers isn’t a good game and pretty short with only five stages. It lacks enough power-ups to keep things interesting and lacks any depth or need for building a strategy with no death penalty. And having no options of any form means you can’t even tweak the most basic of things. This is all a shame as there is something there. The visuals do grab your attention, it’s just too bad it never does anything with them.
The game is less than a fiver so it won’t break the back at essentially $1 a stage, but you should probably skip this one unless it pops up on a sale, something I can see down the road. I might be more happy to recommend this one after the mess that was Contra but there are too many other options to get your 2D fix. Go snag Blazing Chrome on all the current console or even BioLab Wars that only cost me a dollar on the Switch.
“Power Stealers feels like it stole $5 from my pocket with how little this incomplete Contra clone offered.”
Final Score: 2/5
Title: Power Stealers
Genre: Action, Indie
Developer: Intertum
Publisher: Intertum
Release Date: Jan 27, 2020
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