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Tuesday 15 January, 2008
GAMEPLAY
So this pretty much made the brain-deadness after my work shift go away, especially when my pistols got uploaded to a shotgun that makes even bigger splatters. I’m enjoying it a lot, and I think it’s due to two main things; the self-parodying humor, and the near-melee battles that force you to button-mash. Only it’s strategic, to a certain extent. After unloading a round into a wall, the resulting explosion collapsed the ground and dropped DJ into a whole underground cavern with sparkly useful things. It’s rockin’.
DESIGN
While the gloom definitely adds to the Halloween-style atmosphere, at times it also sacrifices visibility. The landscape itself is wonderfully varied, allowing you to use tipped-over cars or giant bones as cover, requiring some skill to balance across walls to reach treasures, or letting you trick demons into falling into the lava. Useful items are just common enough to keep you from dying of enemy-fireball-overload, but not to the point of making it too easy. The soul of every enemy you kill is automatically collected by DJ and then used to open supernatural doors — giving you some purpose for killing things rather than just because the bloodspots look pretty.
Giving grades based on how you performed during the level for certain criteria (killings, combos, etc) isn’t exactly innovative, but here you receive it in the form of a report card. (Did I mention that DJ got sent to kiddies’ military school?) One of the categories is ‘Destruction.’ YES.
As for things like artwork and music, both are quirky and cute in a dead-babies kind of way. Overall, a potentially silly plot for little kids is made awesome through morbid humor, violence, and just fun irreverence; except for a few irritating little things like camera angles, I’m loving it. Totally worth the ten bucks I paid for it down at Streetlight, and more.
I’m thinking that it’s the games that don’t take themselves too seriously, and also force you to think on your feet, that are the most fun. Did I mention you can blow stuff up?
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