This year, more than 1,500 competitors from 171 schools across the country participated in the 17th annual NCCDC, held in San Antonio from April 21-23.Īs the nation's largest collegiate competition of its kind, this year’s NCCDC tasked competitors with the scenario of managing, operating and defending the network infrastructure of a brick-and-mortar gaming retailer that has evolved into an online gaming provider, while fending off a group of live Red Team hackers. This is the optimum graphics level to experience such pulpy chaos and I will not hear otherwise.SAN ANTONIO (April 25, 2022) – The University of Central Florida competed against nine other student-led teams to become champion of the 2022 National Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition, or NCCDC, presented in partnership with Raytheon Intelligence & Space, a Raytheon Technologies business. Keep your raytracing, your photorealistic CGI, your teraflops. There's one boss battle against a flying robot with a ray gun/sword (yes, it's somehow both in one), which takes place on a crumbling skyscraper rooftop during heavy rainfall while laser beams flash down from the sky. But Cyber Shadow's high contrast colours, black spaces, minimalist NPC sprites and hyper designed bosses offer the perfect examples as to why this art style remains so well loved-it's effective. It sometimes draws a bit of a sneer when you compliment the graphics of retro titles like this: after all, games have had 'better' graphics for decades. The bosses, meanwhile, go in the other direction, and take advantage of their ability to fill the screen, embracing the '80s philosophy of 'more is more'. Despite the tiny size and resolution of the sprites, we see huge variation, from Rock 'Em Sock 'Em-style robots armed with pistols to spindly, metallic facehugger inspired bugs.
Those green cylinders aren't Cyber Shadow's best-looking enemies, but it features some fantastic designs elsewhere. (Image credit: Yacht Club Games/Aarne "MekaSkull" Hunziker )
They move on a short delay though, so if you're fast enough you'll get the better of them. Probably the best are the floating green cylinders they don't attack at all, they just hover menacingly directly above you, matching your footsteps, ready to sap your health as soon as you jump. Several have fun little gimmicks, such as splitting into two smaller enemies after being hit, picking up the reward crates around the levels and throwing them at you, or firing projectiles which bounce to keep you constantly dodging. Knockback irritation aside, there is a lot to love about Cyber Shadow's enemies. Even if I appreciated knockback more as a design element, I don't think I'd consider that a fair punishment for a single misstep.
Cyber shadow trophy full#
Taking minor damage from a flying bug at full health, only to be knocked back into a spike, is one of the few cheap deaths in Cyber Shadow. Most of the enemies will just take off a single HP bar, but some arena hazards (lava, spikes) will cause instant death. I don't like it in any of them and I don't like it here. A lot of classic games have it, and a lot of retro-style games mimic it. This is the optimum graphics level to experience such pulpy chaos and I will not hear otherwise.īy far my biggest gripe with the combat though is knockback-where taking damage causes you to stumble back a step. There's not that many enemies it's effective on, and Cyber Shadow always feels better when you're dealing damage on the front foot.
The sprint ability changes the game so much you feel it would have been better to have it from the start, and the parry ability feels like a bit of a waste. Combat opens up later in the game, so it's worth sticking with it, but there are other disappointments early on. In fact, things are a little sparse at first with just the katana, especially as you can only attack in the direction you're facing.
You won't be starting off all that power, though. (Image credit: Yacht Club Games/Aarne "MekaSkull" Hunziker ) A slow start
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