Love+

There comes along only once in a lifetime your true love some say. Luckily for you though, this is a video game and these come around a lot more often, are so much easier to find, are easier to understand and are unquestionably with you for the long-haul. Love+ is a journey but the tender loving care takes a backseat to the tricky levels you get here.

Love+ is very much like many other games that came before it and, believe it or not, that’s probably it’s best quality. That’s something I wouldn’t say about a game like Grand Theft Auto V necessarily. It’s honestly a breath of fresh air. The style, sound and visuals will take you way back to a time before Nintendo, Super Mario Brothers and Punky Brewster.

The game is extremely short but its actually by design. Depending on how familiar you are with the Atari consoles, you may already know that they were almost always score-based games where you’d try to beat your previous high-score each time you fired it up. There were a couple that actually had endings but for the most part, Atari games brought simplicity, action and well… high-scores. Defender and pong will give you a solid idea of what kind of experience an Atari gamer would look to have.

The coolest thing about Love+ is that you can pick your level of difficulty. That in and of itself isn’t amazing but it gives a ton of replay value in a way that most games do not. It blends the high-score system together with a definitive ending so that you know you’ve got this limited ceiling, but you’ll probably never reach it and you may even want to try until that fact destroys your self-esteem. It is score based, mostly depending on how many times you die. I died a lot. And while It looks like a walk in the park, it plays just like a tight-ass Atari game. That’s great, it’s very unforgiving. That’s what we came to know back in the 80’s and 90’s though. Think of games like Mega Man 2 and the endless onslaught coming at you. It never feels hopeless though, you’ll see your obstacles and you’ll get past them without too much profanity most likely. It really is an experience where you shut the world off and just play because it’s fun.

A lot of newer gamers who weren’t around in the early gaming era probably won’t be blown away just by looking at it but I can guarantee that the gameplay will captivate all. I can see people in an arcade, shoulder to shoulder, people behind the player waiting for their chance to play through it. Again, it’s very short so it can be played by about three people from start to finish in an hour, even dying a lot during, but it’s well worth the small price-tag of only $2.99. It took me about 20 minutes of a horribly sloppy run-through, on easy so I had unlimited lives, to beat it. I immediately went right back, a level harder, and died even more because it was that kind of compelling. I just finished up my second run through, on normal, and it literally took nineteen minutes with playing overly cautious. It’s just fun and at the end of the day, isn’t that why we play games?

It also has a neat deal called Love+ Custom where people can create fun levels and you can play through them. There’s some added value for any who are unsure of whether or not it’d be worth paying for.

There’s also a demo available which you can grab over on Steam, all you need is a free Steam account:

http://store.steampowered.com/app/269270/

Look at it this way, try the demo and see what you think. If you like it, it’s a penny less than $3.