Though Dustforce has already made its way to PC owners in 2012, It was only recently that it was released for the Vita. Before I got the Vita and thought about the kinds of games that I wanted to play, I didn't even know about the wonderful Dustforce.
Dustforce was developed by the Hitbox Team. It's a platformer about an acrobatic team of janitors whose sole purpose is to become lean, mean, cleaning machines. That's basically all there is to the game. The game goes from the walk-in-the-park to mind-numbing and seemingly impossible levels that will put your reaction times and precision to the ultimate test. NO JOKE.
Neat freaks and perfectionist gamers who love a good challenge will most likely end up sending their Vita or mouse hurling across the room as - and I can't overstate this enough - the game can be extremely frustrating, even though it has some fairly calming music. If anything, the constantly repeated calming music gets annoying, almost making fun of you even, as you keep dying on that same jump or turn over and over AND OVER again. But man, nothing will ever beat that amazing sense of satisfaction and "in your face! I did it!" feeling that Dustforce can give you. And trust me, it feels GOOD which is probably why me and many other gamers keep coming back to this masterpiece of platforming.
It might sound like I'm bashing the game because it's absurdly hard and undeniably difficult. But that's the selling point of Dustforce. It will test, it will piss you off but it will reward you properly. There is no back story or introduction to the story (if any story was even there to begin with). You start out in this tutorial level that does a good job of explaining you how the controls work. The tutorial itself is a level that you will be scored on. The controls of the game are rather simple and you will get used to them after 20 or 30 minutes of playing. Dustforce may be one of the first true platformers that incorporate fighting mechanics in the game. There are basically 2 types of enemies. Ones that can hurt you and one that doesn't. Some can take more hits than others and some die with a single strike.
The main aim of every single Dustforce level is to rack up a big continuous combo which you can get by cleaning up EVERYTHING and not dying or getting hit by an enemy once. You're scored on 2 factors. Finesse and Completion. The highest rank you can get is an S rank which seems easy in the first few levels. But the difficulty soon racks up. Scoring S ranks on stages (it doesn't have to be S rank all the time) gives you iron keys and when you reach a certain point, you get golden keys too.These keys can unlock harder levels in the area that you're in. And you won't forget your first golden key stage. You'll be begging your body to stop playing over and over again when your mind's telling you you've had enough. Fortunately, You don't stay dead for a long time. It takes only mere seconds before you're back up and climbing walls and ceilings to get to that last piece of dust. And getting S ranks on golden stages are probably the highest level of satisfaction that Dustforce can reward its players. I mean, It's so hard that at times, finding the door with a golden lock itself is difficult.
Dustforce has a charm or magic to it that, no matter how many times you fail in a stage, it makes that small gap or enemy that killed you look possible to overcome. And it is possible. Everything obstacle and area in the game is possible to go through, if it wasn't, it wouldn't be in the game. I want to just congratulate the developers for their level design. The level design is creative, it's fast paced and their combat blends well with the platforming. There's nothing like the feeling of getting perfect scores on a stage you've just tried for the first time.
The game has 4 different playable characters, each with their own special perks. For example, the smaller, purple cleaner can jump 3 times as opposed to the normal blue guy. It's always fun to replay stages using different characters to see how good you are. As you can see from the screenshots, Dustforce's hand drawn animations and environments look really nice and beautiful. The colors aren't too bright but not too dull and the animations have a cartoony, super-hero feel to them. Dustforce is one of the few platformers that's built to be played for long periods of time. There's no exact number of hours of play time but if I had to take a guess. It would be around the 30+ hour mark. And that's if you're not looking to get S ranks on every stage.
Dustforce is a game the doesn't necessarily demand perfection. You could just feel content with B grades on your stages. But the game knows you won't settle for anything less than perfect. Perhaps because it's a game about getting everything cleaned up. And for a game that's about cleaning, Dustforce had me and other gamers swept away.
Final Score - 8 / 10
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