Re: Games Finished: 2017 - Now with 100% less 2016.
Posted: Mon Jul 03, 2017 2:24 pm
I just polished off The Deadly Tower of Monsters. The premise is simple: You are watching a VHS of an old low budget 50s pulp sci-fi B movie while the director records the commentary for the DVD release.
You control the characters (leading man, space woman who has never seen a man, robot) through a sort of 3D action-shooter-platformer, complete with VHS video artifacts, cheesy sci-fi soundtrack, and the director commenting on the actors, the filming, and the oddities that don't make any sense (like how player deaths were just footage accidentally left in, or how much the prop guy hated having to re-build all of the crates that got smashed.) The gameplay was fun, challenging at times, but not really tough on normal difficulty. There were optional collectibles, weapon upgrades, basics skills, and special abilities. The story has you climbing a massive, massive tower that goes from ground level to orbit, and at any point you can look down and see the entire thing, or even jump off and fall all the way down to any point you'd been at previously, landing with your trusty jetpack at the last second (and you could always teleport back.)
They pull off the B movie schtick brilliantly. The VHS effects really work, and the look is spot-on. The 'monsters' you fight are obviously guys stuck in a rubber suit, and if anything flies you can clearly see the wires. When larger monsters appear, they're animated in such a way that they look like the were filmed using stop-motion photography. You carried two melee and two ranged weapons from a large selection, all typical fun sci-fi nonsense (including one blaster that was obviously an electric razor, and one gun that was a small vacuum.)
My only real complaints were that the last chapter's narrative kind of went off the tracks, and that some of the special abilities were never really communicated to the player (I still don't know exactly what the big bubble thing that everyone had actually did.) It was a little too easy at times, but again, I played on normal. It was still tough enough that boss fights required some effort, but never to the point of being dull or frustrating. It was the perfect length for that, too, being maybe 4-5 hours. Any longer and it would have gotten tedious, but it was fine for that length of time.
Not a perfect game, but a ton of fun and a great setting. Maybe a 7.5/10.
You control the characters (leading man, space woman who has never seen a man, robot) through a sort of 3D action-shooter-platformer, complete with VHS video artifacts, cheesy sci-fi soundtrack, and the director commenting on the actors, the filming, and the oddities that don't make any sense (like how player deaths were just footage accidentally left in, or how much the prop guy hated having to re-build all of the crates that got smashed.) The gameplay was fun, challenging at times, but not really tough on normal difficulty. There were optional collectibles, weapon upgrades, basics skills, and special abilities. The story has you climbing a massive, massive tower that goes from ground level to orbit, and at any point you can look down and see the entire thing, or even jump off and fall all the way down to any point you'd been at previously, landing with your trusty jetpack at the last second (and you could always teleport back.)
They pull off the B movie schtick brilliantly. The VHS effects really work, and the look is spot-on. The 'monsters' you fight are obviously guys stuck in a rubber suit, and if anything flies you can clearly see the wires. When larger monsters appear, they're animated in such a way that they look like the were filmed using stop-motion photography. You carried two melee and two ranged weapons from a large selection, all typical fun sci-fi nonsense (including one blaster that was obviously an electric razor, and one gun that was a small vacuum.)
My only real complaints were that the last chapter's narrative kind of went off the tracks, and that some of the special abilities were never really communicated to the player (I still don't know exactly what the big bubble thing that everyone had actually did.) It was a little too easy at times, but again, I played on normal. It was still tough enough that boss fights required some effort, but never to the point of being dull or frustrating. It was the perfect length for that, too, being maybe 4-5 hours. Any longer and it would have gotten tedious, but it was fine for that length of time.
Not a perfect game, but a ton of fun and a great setting. Maybe a 7.5/10.
