Skatemasta Tcheco Review

A while ago there was a game called Tcheco in the Castle of Lucio, well, it’s spawned a sequel in the guise of Skatemasta Tcheco, one of those rare occasions where a sequel is a very different game to its predecessor. Where Tcheco was a 2D platformer Skatemasta Tcheco is what some would class as an automatic side-scroller. Just like Tcheco in the Castle of Lucio, Skatemasta Tcheco is another homage to an earlier time of 8-bit graphics and gameplay.

Skatemasta Tcheco is an automatic side-scroller where the screen continuously moves the scene along. If Tcheco gets caught behind an obstacle and the screen catches up with him, then he’ll lose some health. This kind of gameplay makes Skatemasta Tcheco quite the fast-paced and frenetic experience. As you can guess from the name your titular character Tcheco moves and jumps using his skateboard. To help you on your way in Skatemasta Tcheco you have eight hearts, should you get hit you lose half a heart. If you jump you can hurl yourself forward in a sort of flying rolling attack kind of way which is useful in destroying enemies.

Skatemasta Tcheco is a challenging game in both difficulty and navigation. As you progress many of the platforms you will jump on will start moving, disappearing or leave very little room for error. Bear in mind that you will be constantly moving forward Skatemasta Tcheco can become irritatingly annoying quite quickly as you try to get used to jumping on a small platform just as the screen attempts to push you off. Obviously, being a side-scrolling game obstacles do not just come in the form of enemies or platforms, you will need to jump over things before you get stuck which will result in you losing some health. An annoying aspect of Skatemasta Tcheco is that should you only be a couple of hits away from dying, when you start the next level you’ll still only have those couple of hearts to keep you going, it’s best to just restart the level if that’s the case. Money can be attained throughout the levels, this money only seems useful for saving your progress in between levels. There are letters dotted around in each level, very similar to Perils of Baking. If you collect all the letters, then in the boss battle a ‘friend’ will come to help you make the boss fight significantly easier.

Levels in Skatemasta Tcheco can be played in whatever order you want, they are scored accordingly i.e. 1 star for easy and 5 stars for very hard. Skatemasta Tcheco is a pretty repetitive game like most old school 8-bit platformers, every level practically plays the same as the impending nature of the automatic scrolling is non-stop, the only differences being the backdrops. Bosses are fairly straightforward to beat, especially with your ‘friend’ in tow, these bosses have the same limited attacks so it’s quite apparent what they will do next. Skatemasta Tcheco is a challenging game, but that may be more down to the controls and small margin of error.

Graphically Skatemasta Tcheco is an 8-bit game, which usually don’t look great on modern big screens. The pixels of each character and platform can be seen so that either will make you get all nostalgic or hurt your eyes depending on how much you enjoy retro graphics. There are points when you are not fully sure what is a platform or what is a background which can be quite frustrating. Add this to other sections of the game where you practically have to wait until the last section to see if there is a platform near enough to jump on. Games should be challenging, but for the right reasons, something Skatemasta Tcheco seems not to understand. Musically Skatemasta Tcheco goes down the synthesised route with various brash sound effects.

Skatemasta Tcheco is a challenging game for both good and bad reasons. It wouldn’t look out of play 25/30 years ago, but even then with the issues it has Skatemasta Tcheco wouldn’t wow people back then. If you are looking for a platform title that challenges both the brain and your frustrations then you may get an hour out of Skatemasta Tcheco for everyone else it’s not really worth getting on the skateboard.

REVIEW CODE: A complimentary Playstation 4 code was provided to Bonus Stage for this review. Please send all review code enquiries to press@4gn.co.uk.