Just Hero (PC) Review

Just Hero has absolutely the base set of qualifications to pass as a platformer: move left and right, jump, and kill enemies by landing on their heads. It even starts in world that resembles a "Green Zone," a jungle mountain area. It checks all the boxes for a platformer, but at that point, it appears to lose its way. The first major issue is jumping, because it is, for lack of a better word, luck based. Sometimes you will jump just fine, while other times you'll fall and splat into the ground below. In a title that requires exact movements, though, this hit-and-miss nature of the jumping mechanics is completely unacceptable. A lot of the movement needs to, not only be exact, but done with such a speed that the lack of dependable movement makes certain sections borderline unplayable.

This could almost be forgiven if checkpoints were more frequent, but that's not at all the case. Sometimes, they are too frequent, but a lot of the time, they are too uncommon to be useful. One particular section has the player running across multiple small platforms, again with poor jumping, while hazards all around. You have to do this to reach a higher platform, and the slightest mistake could lead to this section being repeated over and over again, as the checkpoint comes after another gauntlet of issues.

It's clearly supposed to be hard, but the mix of bad jumping and no checkpoints makes it rage inducing for all the wrong reasons. Collision is also an absolute mess. Those aforementioned swinging hazards, for instance, will do damage even if they are clearly not touching the main character; jumping on enemies is the only way to kill them… in theory, but it's clear you can jump against them and they will die; falling is supposed to induce damage, but it's never inflicted consistently, since, one can fall from a short drop and suffer heavy damage, while falling from a higher drop inflicts absolutely no damage.

Not that taking damage matters, as dying is also wildly inconsistent. The rule seems to be whenever you get hurt, the screen will shake. Sometimes, however, the screen will shake so many times from taking damage, but the game won't kill you, regardless of running out of hearts. The positives are hard to find here, but there are some neat things laid throughout. They come in the form of the somewhat amateur look of the game. While it may look chunky, like a prototype brought to life, it almost forms into a unique style. Finding a hidden spot is revealed in a neat tearing away effect, and the game actually looks quite good for how unpolished it is.