Coffee Crisis Review – A Lot of Effort Has Been Put Into This, but Something Still Feels off…

An aspect of gaming that I like to see is developers putting a lot of their personality into a title. This may take multiple forms, such as a certain style of dialog, a setting, or something else. A recent game I played that does this a great deal is the SEGA Genesis/Mega Drive Beat’em Up, Coffee Crisis.

It takes place in Pittsburgh, PA, and features multiple locations from that fair city. Additionally, BlackForge Coffee (website) is referred to a lot, along with Greywalker (website) composing the music, and Mega Cat Studios being the developer. All are, or were, from that city. Accordingly, Coffee Crisis has a neat vibe about it, with coffee and music being mentioned repeatedly as the title progresses. They are all a big part of the game’s persona.

As the title opens, we learn that some aliens have been stealing our Wi-Fi, and want to take our coffee and music, too! Not only are they invading, but they’re are also taking over the bodies of humans to achieve their goals.

Gameplay

In response to the threat, you play as one of two baristas from BlackForge Coffee and start beating up the aliens with your assortment of coffee-related attacks. These include a series of punches and kicks, a charge attack, grabbing them, or throwing them away from you. There’s also a special move that can be done that drains your health a little bit and some weapons to pick up along the way. As I played, I found the grabbing techniques to be the easiest to use. Yet, they are not always effective. I say that for a couple of reasons:

1. Not every enemy you face can be grabbed.
2. The hit detection is really unusual. I’ll discuss that later.

For the enemies that can’t be grabbed, I resorted to using jump kicks most of the time. Normally in Beat’em Ups, they are great for crowd control because they tend to knock down your adversaries. Yet, in this game they are risky to use. The reason being that they don’t knock down the enemy. At most, they’ll knock them back.

Moreover, many of enemies can still hit you while you’re flying toward them. This was a real surprise to me, and highlights some of the weird hit detection in the game. When you’re on the ground, the aliens usually stand near you in a way that allows them to hit you, but you can’t hit them unless you move. If you try to punch them from where you are standing, you’ll just hit the air.

Another move that I wasn’t able to pull off very well was the charge attack. It did a lot of damage, but was a challenge to use effectively. I often missed my attacks with it. Additionally, If the aliens hit you when in your charging animation, you’ll need to hold down the attack button again. Then there’s the special moves, which drain your life bar. I tended to only use them against bosses, and not too much.

However, in an attempt to spice things up, the game also includes weapons you can pick to beat down the aliens. These are effective, often doing a full combo’s worth of damage with one strike. Yet, they cannot be overused. If you get hit, you drop them, and you can only use them a few times before they throw them away and can’t be picked up again. They were fun to use, but there isn’t much variety between them. A lot just behave like a baseball bat or pipe.

Finally, there’s the level design, which is inconsistent. Some stages are extremely short, and include only a boss or a couple of foes to defeat. On the other hand, others feel like a drag, with you having to take down over a couple dozen adversaries to move on to the next area. By the way, I will say that this latter length isn’t normally a problem, but the longer sections really make the shorter ones stand out. And like in Almost Hero (Review), which is also on the same cart for Evercade users, many of the stages just have you move from left to right before facing a boss and walking through a portal. Sometimes I really wanted to see stage hazards be implemented, or even significant vertical movement, but neither of those potential options ever happened.

Music and Sound Effects

Related to the lack of variety, one of the worst aspects of the game are the incredibly boring sound effects. The volume for them is extremely low and sound downright pathetic. They sound like a weak “ding!” or light “bang!” sound, thereby contributing to a sense of having no impact when you hit enemies. Partly because of them, I felt like a weak loser while playing. Additionally, gameplay is also harmed because the difference between hitting someone, or kicking the air, is pretty minor. At least from an audio perspective. In fact, this game gives me new appreciation for quality sound balancing when it comes to effects. When they are too low or weak, it really does negatively impact a game!

Equally important to the sound effects is the music. Thankfully, this is better, and sometimes I think it’s pretty good. Sadly, I have no desire to listen to any of it outside of the game. Perhaps my apathy toward heavy metal music is coming through here. Fans of the genre will probably enjoy it more than myself.

Graphics

From an audio and video perspective, the best thing about Coffee Crisis is its graphics. At the very least they have some nice flourishes. The animations for the characters are great, including their idle and walking animations. Attacks look good, too. The way the two baristas move around is smooth, along with some neat effects to make the animations appear more fluid. Ashley’s movements highlight some of this well. I noticed it especially while taking photos of the game for this review.

Coffee Crisis also includes some story sequences between stages as well. In spite of lacking animation for these, the pixel art added to the personality of the game and did a good job of keeping me somewhat engaged in it.

The main area where I was disappointed in the visuals were the backgrounds. Yes, there was some good variety among them. However, they also felt flat with the lack of parallax scrolling. Weak color depth and the absence of details were also issues. The attempted lighting effects while fighting along the river looked a bit silly with the visible squares on the edge of the lights. At the same time though, I enjoyed seeing little sites of the city. For example, I think the area with the lights is the Grandview Avenue. You can learn more about some of the areas that the game visits at the Development section of its Wikipedia page.

Final Thoughts

And again, that was one of the coolest things about this game. Its connection to the city was a great touch, along with the many references to coffee, music, and various locations. The problem is that those things don’t make me enjoy the title that much more than if the areas were just standard Beat’em Up locations, assuming they would have been done well.

To me, the unfortunate sense I have with this game is that it’s just boring! The sound effects are extremely weak, the hit detection was irritating, and the level design was repetitive. Although it’s true that the animation and character graphics are good at times, I couldn’t get into the game too much.

Coffee Crisis may have a neat personality that makes it stand out from others in its genre, the way it was done left a lot to be desired. The visuals and some of the music aren’t enough for me to bring the game up to any other rating other than Mixed.

Title: Coffee Crisis (Publisher Page, but not everything mentioned there is applicable to the SEGA Genesis version)
Genre: Beat’em Up
Year Released: 2017
Developer: Mega Cat Studios (Link to website)
Available On: SEGA Genesis and Evercade through the Mega Cat Studios Collection 1. It’s also available on the PlayStation 4/5, Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch 1 and 2, and Steam in an enhanced form.
Price Paid: $2.52 or $25.18 for the collection on Evercade.

Remember, we can have different opinions about the games we play. If you like something more (or less) than I do, both of our perspectives are valid. Please see my Review Rating Scale to know more of how I rate games.