Crime Girl

Buster Bros. is one of those old school Capcom games I could never warm up to. I liked the characters and the detailed backgrounds, but there was always something about being stuck in closed-off arenas that left me unsatisfied. The new game Crime Girl is basically what you get when you break down those walls and turn the concept into a proper 2D action game. It's a devilishly addictive platformer that borrows heavily from the past, all while somehow managing to stand out with a fresh take on the gameplay and a simple premise that's hard to put down. Crime Girl is here to steal a lot more than a few priceless jewels.

This is the story of a wily young woman with one ambitious goal -- to own all the emeralds in the world. This may sound like a lofty plan, but Crime Girl thinks she has what it takes to pull it off. Her idea is to infiltrate the abandoned towers of London in hopes of snatching up all the gems without getting caught. It's a solid plan that should have gone off without a hitch, but she failed to anticipate that these towers would be filled with a wide variety of ghouls and ghosts.

Crime Girl is a simple action game where the whole goal is to steal emeralds and avoid all things supernatural. The problem is that our hero didn't exactly come prepared to fight a tower full of ghosts. She figured that this would be a simple in and out sort of job, so all she has to protect her is a grappling hook. And it's not even a Bionic Commando-style grappling hook that can be aimed in all directions. Oh no, this is the kind of hook that shoots straight up in the air and that's it. You can't shoot it from side to side or in any direction, so if you want to kill a bad guy, they need to be directly above our young crook.

Although limiting, this one twist to the gameplay goes a long way to make Crime Girl feel unique. It forces you to change how you would normally approach each enemy and the paths you take through the randomly-generated stages. The good news is that our hero can also take out enemies by jumping on their heads, so you're golden as long as the bad guys are either directly above or below you. If you can't make that work, then you'll need to use a little strategy to find another way to attack the enemies or avoid them all together. With great risk comes great reward, so there's a lot of incentive to master the controls and steal even the most out-of-the-way emeralds.

Now, you probably noticed that I snuck the phrase "randomly-generated" into the description just now. I know a lot of people immediately tune out the moment those words come up, but I'm hoping you'll hear me out. Crime Girl tries to split the difference and have it both ways. If you want to go through a tower that never changes and has been expertly crafted by the developers, then you'll be happy to know that there's a mode for that. However, I found that the real fun came from not knowing what I would see from one round to the next.

One of the reasons this game benefits from procedurally-generated stages is that the rounds themselves are fairly short. It won't take long to fight to the very top of the tower and collect all the emeralds. That's not to say it's easy, but you can easily play through the whole game in a sitting. The fact that the stages are constantly changing from one session to the next ensures that the action remains fresh, and it leads to that feeling where you just want to go one more round. That's the problem I found myself running into. Every time I died, I wanted to jump right back in and collect a few more jewels. The fact that the game keeps track of the emeralds and missions also helped to keep me engaged.

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That said, Crime Girl does run into the problem where it becomes repetitive over time. Even with the interesting use of the grappling hook, you've seen a lot of this in other games. I kept hoping the developers would add some extra abilities or cool unlockables, but they don't do much of that here. This also seems like the kind of game that would work well with a second player, so it's a shame you can only go through it solo.

Beyond that, I was a little disappointed by the boss fights. There are a bunch of them to contend with in the tower (as well as a Boss Rush mode you can unlock), but none are especially interesting. In fact, most are far more frustrating than fun. They are filled with the types of cheap hits that you were often able to avoid in the regular stages. Worst of all, Crime Girl traps you into the arena fights I was trying to get away from. It's a shame that the boss fights aren't as creative as the rest of the game.

While it's not the most original game you're going to play this year, Crime Girl is too much fun to dismiss out of hand. The game handles well, has a cool throwback look and uses a grappling hook that is fun to master. What I don't like is that it grows repetitive over time and doesn't offer as much depth as other games in the genre. But even with a few flaws, Crime Girl is one of those games I had a hard time putting down. This is a strong sophomore effort from HelixFox Games.