Quite simply, this game is WAY too hard.
The game looks fantastic and has a great visual style. It also has a sense of humor that other games can't match. And the game itself is fun at times. But once you start with the 'one-hit deaths', cheap hits, or tons of enemies the game become tedious. I don't know if the developers were trying to create that 'old-school' feel of those very difficult side-scrollers of the 8/16-bit areas but they went overboard. This game makes Contra seem like a walk in the park.
It's really too bad the developers chose to make the game this way. There was a lot of potential here for a great title. I would recommend checking out the demo since you may find the game's difficulty level more forgiving than I did, but after purchasing this title I wish I would have tried out the demo first. This game has been given great reviews on a lot of websites and the other versions of this game reviewed very well too. I see the potential for the game to live up to those scores, but unfortunately the final product (in my opinion) doesn't live up to the hype.