Strider Hiryu has always seemed like the Boba Fett of the Capcom universe - iconic looks, massively popular with fans, yet has never really had a chance to fully deliver on his enormous potential. Double Helix’s 2014 reboot of the flashy platform series fleshes out the 1989 coin-op original and gives it a light Metroidvania-esque layer of exploration. While its slightly unbalanced design holds it back from being a genuine classic, it nonetheless does enough right to put a swagger back in Strider’s step for the first time in decades.

From the moment you hang glide into Kazakh City, it’s clear that Double Helix has nailed Strider’s eye-searing sword slash, perpetual dash, and acrobatic panache. Strider simply feels wonderful to control - particularly in the smoothness of his signature slide and cartwheel moves, his silky manoeuvrability in scaling walls and ceilings, and the way he can slash his Cypher sword essentially as fast as you can enthusiastically pump the attack button. Tearing through enemy grunts and drones and leaving them to bleed sparks in the wake of Strider’s purposeful deathmarch never failed to satisfy over the six-hour duration of my playthrough.

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Strider’s also got a slightly bigger bag of tricks this time around. The three ‘Option’ special abilities from the original game return - allowing you to unleash a cyber panther to attack ground-based enemies, a small droid to momentarily shield you and activate switches, or an eagle-shaped beam of energy to deliver a substantial blow, the latter of which is particularly useful for making dents in the health bars of most of the bosses.You can also unlock upgrades for Strider’s sword, such as the ability to baseball-bat back enemy projectiles or deliver incendiary damage with each slash. Switching up the blade types is crucial for overcoming different enemy types and opening colour-coded doors, but there are a few other useful applications, such as using the freeze blade to turn flying enemies into floating platforms to jump on. In a nice touch, the sword type you have selected is indicated by the changing colour of Strider’s scarf (well, scarf-like laser beam as it is now).

So far so good, yet where Strider’s determined strut towards greatness stumbles slightly is with its inconsistent swings in difficulty from one boss fight to the next and the general rehashing of both enemy types and level-design elements. On its normal difficulty this Strider reboot just can’t quite find a balance - one moment you’re lazily button-mashing your way to an easy victory against one of Grandmaster Meio’s supposedly deadly assassins, the next you’re being knocked into the earth like a tent peg by the towering Mecha Pon gorilla-bot and having your health bar reduced to dust after a handful of hits.

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Part of the reason progression through Strider can at times sprint face-first into a screaming wall of frustration is due to the lack of a recharging health bar. This old-school design choice isn’t a problem for the most part, since each level has an overabundance of health packs and recharge stations to top you up with - you can essentially breeze your way from A to B slashing away without a second’s thought for self preservation. That is, until the door slams shut behind you in a boss arena, at which point health distribution becomes noticeably stingier, often depriving you of pickups entirely.This issue became particularly grating to me after the first time I was killed by the aforementioned Mecha Pon, since the checkpoint I was restarted at forced me to retrace my steps through a room of near-unavoidable laser beams and thus taking a substantial hit to my health bar before I’d even returned to face the boss again. What followed was a painful cycle of sudden deaths and swear words, and it certainly wasn’t the only time in Strider such an instance occurred. The juxtaposition of the relative ease of the main gameplay experience with the often brutally unforgiving boss fights can feel noticeably jarring at times.Elsewhere, Double Helix has been guilty of copying and pasting entire chunks of levels in order to give the illusion of breadth to each environment, whilst completely ignoring the Siberian snow and Amazonian jungle areas from the original game in favour of setting almost all of Strider in the Neo-Soviet Kazakh City setting (a snowy Siberian-esque level was teased in very early screenshots for the game, but it's missing from the final release). The two absent locales would have added some much-needed variety to the environments, and as a result each area can feel a bit nondescript. This can make the Metroidvania-esque backtracking a touch confusing at times, and disappointing at others once you’ve realised you’ve zigzagged from one end of the map to the other just to unlock an underwhelming piece of concept art.Still, there are a number of sections that really shine, such as the zero-gravity areas in the research facility that flip the action on its head, the sky-high assault on the aerial battleship Balrog, and the series of warp gates that ping Strider around the city like a murderous pinball. Once I’d beaten the campaign and gone back for all the collectibles, I also enjoyed tackling the Beacon Run checkpoint races since, like I mentioned earlier, moving Strider at speed through each obstacle course is such a genuine pleasure - particularly after you've unlocked all the power-ups.