Barnyard Blast: Swine of the Night

In the history of video games, all sorts of characters have gone up against the forces of darkness — ancient warriors, modern-day soldiers, even little kids. Still, never before has a cowboy pig been given the chance to take on the legions of evil. Never, that is, until now, as Barnyard Blast for Nintendo DS stars one Robert Belmart, an anthropomorphic pig complete with neckerchief and ten-gallon hat. And while Robert’s quest has a certain amount of charm and an undeniably interesting concept, it’s also got some serious flaws.

The game begins with Robert’s son Cliffy (Cliffy Belmart, CliffyB—get it?) tee-peeing the ancient evil castle that sits adjacent to their sleepy little hometown, and the ancient evil that resides there wastes no time in kidnapping the piglet. Robert (equipped by his wife with a pistol, a shotgun, a whip, and some dynamite) sets out to rescue his son and make it back in time for dinner. The game’s script is really quite clever and funny, and makes plenty of references to various video games, TV shows, and Internet memes. At various times, characters make references to everything from Seinfeld to the SNES western/action title Sunset Riders to the “All Your Base” phenomenon. While every joke isn’t a killer, the script is genuinely entertaining.

To get to those entertaining storyline sequences, though, you’ve got to slog your way through each of the game’s six levels. The game is an obvious love letter to the two great 8-bit horror/platforming series, Castlevania and Ghosts ‘n Goblins, and as such, delivers straightforward, uncompromising action/platforming. Level design is mostly uneventful; outside of the occasional floating-platform sequence, there is little to each stage other than a series of enemy encounters. 8-bit action fans will feel right at home in these encounters: enemies use pattern-based attacks, and respawn ad infinitum. It’s the sort of game design you don’t see much anymore, and it’s easy to see why: cheap deaths, unavoidable hits, and overwhelming enemy numbers plague every stage, making the whole thing feel frustrating and unfair. This might not be such a big problem if your character controlled well, but like Sir Arthur and Simon Belmont before him, Robert is a stiff, clumsy hero, with an incredibly slow walking speed and a pathetically small jump. The only things he’s got going for him are his four weapons and a selection of power-ups that increases every time you topple a level boss. Eventually you get fast-run and high-jump abilities, but these don’t help much, as you can only equip one power-up at a time, and it’s practically suicide to unequip the healing power-up at any point.

 
Don’t celebrate killing those enemies yet, Robert, because six more are about to take their place.

As a definite budget release (the entire development team consisted of nine people) Barnyard Blast certainly isn’t going to win any awards for technical achievements, but it’s not a bad looking game. Despite the GBA-caliber graphics, the game features some good artwork, especially some stunning parallax-scrolling backgrounds. The characters don’t look quite as good, as each possesses just a few frames of animation, but the design is pretty good all around; while I could do with fewer vegetable-headed mummies, there are some truly inventive boss designs. Similarly, the game’s audio is decent without knocking anyone’s socks off; while all the different enemy types seem to share a communal set of sound effects, the music is surprisingly good, in a retro kind of way.

 
Some of the environment art could hold its own against any of the GBA Castlevanias.

Barnyard Blast isn’t trying to redefine the action-platformer. No one could argue that it’s a particularly polished game, and its gameplay is pretty shallow. Still, I can’t quite find it in my heart to say that it’s entirely without merit. Sure, it’s an unapologetic throwback to 8-bit at its most frustrating, but it’s somehow charming nonetheless. Just as cheesy B-movies can be appreciated for their campy, trashy fun, Barnyard Blast can be kind of enjoyable despite its numerous glaring problems. If you can handle an atrocious difficulty curve, archaic game design, and dated technology, Barnyard Blast might provide you with a few hours of old-school horror action.

Gameplay: 6.4
Barnyard Blast’s gameplay is straight out of the NES era, and that’s not a good thing — gameplay has evolved since then for a reason. Frequent unavoidable deaths and boring level design won’t impress you, but combat can be somewhat enjoyable, and some of the boss encounters are pretty clever.

Graphics: 6.7
The visuals aren’t overly impressive, but some decent art design makes up for it to a certain degree. Characters animate stiffly, but the graphics do a good job of imitating/spoofing the Castlevania/Ghosts ‘n Goblins look.

Sound: 6.6
Sure, the sound effects are reused a little too often, but the horror-style music is genuinely good, even if there are only a handful of songs in the whole game.

Difficulty: Hard
That’s frustrating-hard, not challenging-hard. Prepare for plenty of unavoidable enemy attacks.

Concept: 8.5
The game has the ironic, self-aware sense of humor fitting for a parody of this type, and the writing is by and large spot-on. It’s also one of the more original game concepts recently. Plus, you control a talking cowboy pig. You’ve got to give them credit for that.

Overall: 6.7
While the gameplay exhibits most of the problems we thought we had eradicated by the dawn of 16-bit, it’s not unenjoyable, in an unforgiving, old-school way. I expect most people will hate this game, but Barnyard Blast is a quirky throwback to the horror games of the late eighties. Those who played and cherished those games back then might find something to like about this scruffy, flawed little game.