![]() Completion gets you a bronze medal, finishing with a certain score (reduced for each death) gets you a silver, while getting that score and fulfilling another criteria – like not being spotted, or not taking any damage – gets you a gold. To encourage replayability, you’re also ranked on each of the game’s 50-odd levels. There’s even a little bit of stealth aside from the blue doors – lights can be shot out creating dark patches in which you can’t be spotted, and this can be rather important considering one foe raises the alarm when he sees you. There are retractable floors and walls controlled by switches and levers that need to be moved into position to create paths you can hide in blue doors to duck enemies or escape gunfire (and these can be slammed open to knock out anyone outside) there are destructible walls there are extra weapons there are explosive barrels for the kicking. The new mechanics are promising, at least. It’s the sort of game that makes you feel like the developers are laughing at you every time you die – a frequent occurrence thanks to unresponsive and sticky controls, and the aforementioned sadistic level design. Except that it’s not fair enough, because this is a puzzle game with level design that goes beyond irritating, an emphasis on wasting the player’s time, and a heavy reliance on both luck and trial and error. And yes, you still have a terrifying quiff. You need to navigate the obstacles and enemies on each level, make your way to each red door, and escape – all within a tight time limit. As a result it moves away from its predecessor’s emphasis on quick thinking and becomes, instead, a puzzle game. ![]() Elevator Action Deluxe takes this base and attempts to spice it up with all sorts of level layouts, new enemies, and new mechanics. Enemies would come out of other doors and chase you by using those same elevators and escalators whether you fought back or simply stayed away was up to you. Back then, the goal was to descend a tower block via elevators and escalators, entering red doors to steal secrets. Ostensibly, Elevator Action Deluxe is a remake/update of a 1983 arcade classic (unsurprisingly named Elevator Action) in which players took control of a secret agent with a terrifying quiff. Does that sound harsh? Then I apologise, but this game doles out the sort of raw frustration that makes the Saw films look less like the cinematic equivalent of flogging a dead mule, and more like a goldmine of ideas. Here, my screams were exacerbated by the knowledge that I would never be able to track down the level designers and force-feed them their own feet. In Super Meat Boy, my screams were tempered somewhat as the annoyance was short-lived, the action fast, and the levels smartly designed. Elevator Action Deluxe has made me scream with rage more than anything since Super Meat Boy.
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