Strafe (PS4) Review

Strafe (PS4) Review

Release Date: 9 May 2018

Date Played: 18 June 2022

Strafe has a cool premise: Blend the fast and tight gameplay of old school shooters like Quake and Doom with the popular rogue-like stylings that are worming their way into every game these days. It was a good enough concept, but it totally failed in almost every conceivable way. It was developed by Pixel Titans and published by Devolver Digital. It was met with a less than lukewarm reception on consoles, but fared slightly better on PC.

Gameplay:

Strafe is an absolute mess of a game.  There's no other way to put it.  Not only is it poorly designed and relatively unfun, but it's also a buggy mess that is barely playable much of the time. 

You're a scrapper who's sent out into a hostile environment to collect... scrap. You start off the game by selecting from either the shotgun, railgun, or machine gun and then teleport into the first level.  In rogue-like fashion, you'll soon discover that all of the levels are procedurally generated and have a randomized layout. This seems good in theory, but falls very flat because these fast-twitch shooters rely on precise and well thought out level design that can be memorized.  The ability to fly through the levels while blasting away all the baddies is the main draw to these games and gives that sense of momentum that is so exhilarating. Obviously, that's what the developers had intended.  But, unfortunately, you can't do that here.   You have to hang back and play more conservatively than you want to because there's no way to know what's coming up ahead. You'll find yourself funneling the mindless and frustrating enemies into choke points just to mow them down. 

However, just because you're killing tons of enemies, don't think the game is easy. Strafe is unfairly brutal in a bad way.  Most of the early enemies just run directly towards you no matter where you are. This can be a huge issue since there is an overwhelming amount of them.  They will pop out of previously cleared areas and make no sound, so you have no idea they are behind you until you take damage. You have to pop around corners to try to observe the upcoming rooms and find a course of action.  Of course, there are enemies that hang onto the walls and ceilings just out of sight that love to drop down on you once you pass by.  Of course, they are silent and you won't know they're there until you've already taken damage. It's an annoying gameplay loop, and there are so, so many instances of unavoidable damage.  That's a real issue since you only have one life and health refills are rare.

Your starting weapons are puny and don't feel good to fire. There's no impact to them or sense of weightiness. Not only that, but the upgrades and other weapons you find throughout your run of the game don't improve matters much.  These upgrades  are scattered around the levels that increase your fire rate, health, armor, etc.  But they don't really seem to make you feel any more powerful and the awesome synergies that can be found in most rogue-likes are absent here.  Also absent is a perpetual progressions system.  There is really nothing to unlock other than difficulty modifiers and teleporters to let you skip the first few levels of the game. So, you're not going to be able to improve or alter the way the game plays on subsequent runs. The game will play exactly the same as the first time you played it.  It's a real oversight on the developer's part.  These meta-progression systems are an essential staple of rogue-likes, and without them, any failed run feels like wasted time.

In addition to this, the game has real framerate issues on PS4.  Aiming can be difficult because of the choppiness of your movement, and hitting enemies can be a challenge. This is even the case when the enemies are right up in your face and it feels like you can't hit the broad side of a barn. When rooms fill up with enemies, the framerate drops into the single digits and makes the game neigh unplayable.  Since you only have 1 life, this usually spells the end of your run.  Even if the game performed well, the aiming feels very slippery and you can tell it's more suited to a keyboard and mouse setup.  It's obvious that this port was an afterthought and PC was the main focus during development.

There are 4 levels in the game that are each broken up into 3 sections.  Sadly, because of the randomized nature of everything and the necessity to play so conservatively most of the time, things begin to all blur together and get pretty boring rather quickly. Although, I can't say I was ever able to make it to the latter levels because of the buggy nature of the game.

I also encountered bugs that included key items falling through the floor, shops taking money for ammo and not dispensing it, and numerous crashes between the levels. On my best run, I got stuck on some terrain and wasn't able to progress.  I had to start over.  The game has a pretty substantial patch that seems to fix some of these issues.  Personally, I played the game with the patch, and still encountered all of these issues.  I can't even imagine how bad it would be without the patch. 

Presentation:

The game is supposed to look like a game from 1996, and I guess it does.  It has those clunky graphics like Quake and does a good job of evoking the look of games from the period.  Sadly, even though it looks the part, the game has no artistic style and is boring to look at.  Almost everything is the same gunmetal gray corridors and rooms.  As you progress further into the game things never really change much and remains underwhelming.  The enemies are also really boring and uninspired. You can blow off parts of their bodies, which I guess is novel.  But it really messes with the kill animations of the game and sometimes it's difficult to tell if an enemy is actually dead, or if parts of them are just falling off.  The peashooter feel of most of the guns don't really help to remedy this.

The music is also extremely underwhelming and has no memorable points whatsoever.  It's kind of a synth-guitar sound that tries to rip off better games from the 90s, but totally fails. There are no cool hooks or riffs to latch on to and just seems to meander around while you play.

On a very positive note, this game has the best tutorial I've ever seen.  It features a live action training presentation with a fantastic VHS filter on it that stars a sexy lab tech who is training you on how to be a metal scrapper.  Hillary Vetter, the actress, does a phenomenal job in this role and is the best part of the game. It's full of fantastic humor, great sets, memorable one-liners, and enough charm to almost justify purchasing the game.  Her delivery of, "There's more to scrapping than just collecting scrap and scrapping it" is one of the hardest I've ever laughed playing any video game and if the rest of the game lived up to the caliber of its tutorial, it would be one of the best games of all time.

Conclusion:

Strafe is not worth playing.  Even if the game worked (which it doesn't), it is a boring and tedious mess of bad gameplay design and failure to capture what makes the games it's trying to emulate fun. Literally every part of the game, excluding the tutorial, is a waste of your time if you decide to play it on PS4.  Perhaps you can have some fun with the PC version, but the version I attempted to play just doesn't function.  I feel like the developers had a simple concept of blending Quake with a rogue-like and just had no idea how to achieve anything they wanted to do.  

This is one of only a couple of games I've played in the last several years that was so buggy and poorly performing that I literally couldn't finish it.  

Pros:

• The most interesting, funny, and awesome tutorial I've ever seen in a game

Cons:

• The game is a buggy mess and doesn't work

• The framerate is so bad you can't aim

• The randomized levels make the game less fun, not more interesting

• The enemies have annoying A.I. and deal cheap damage

• Boring and uninspired presentation

Final Status: Played

Final Score: 3/10 (Terrible)

 

Doom Eternal (PS4) Review

Doom Eternal (PS4) Review

Date Released: 20 March 2020

Date Played: 7 April 2022

Introduction:

As I was playing Doom Eternal, I kept thinking something was wrong with me. After playing Doom reboot back when it released in 2016, I was thrilled to play this sequel.  This enthusiasm was only bolstered when I saw the rave reviews upon the game's release.  Not only was it pretty much universally acclaimed by critics and the public alike, it made many top 10 games of the year list and even has a loyal group of followers that hail it as the best first person shooter of all time.  Needless to say, I felt like I was doing something wrong while I was playing.  I kept dying repeatedly when I would dive into the fray against Hell's legions, I found myself constantly out of ammo, the story was convoluted and full of too much terminology, there were long platforming segments that felt out of place, and there was a sort of resentment and distain building up inside of me as I played.  I couldn't put my finger on it at first, and would find myself playing for an hour and then being thankful when I could find a stopping spot so I could go play a different game.  It took me months to work my way through Doom Eternal and in the meantime I completed 11 other games.  

In a moment of frustration, I decided to do an internet search to see if there was anyone out there that felt the same as me, and unsurprisingly, there is a significant selection of gamers that felt exactly the same as I do.  After watching several video reviews and essays detailing the flaws of this game, it finally came together in my mind why this game fails to live up to the standards of 2016 Doom and falls rather flat in terms of game design.

Gameplay:

Doom 2016 was a fast-paced slaughter fest where you played as a god-like superhuman called the Doom Slayer who wants nothing more than to annihilate the denizens of Hell. You would enter these mini-combat arenas that were filled with waves of enemies and you just went to town having your way with them.  After dealing enough damage to an enemy, it would flash and allow you to perform a glory kill.  This would allow you to refill some of your health while you strung together kill after kill after kill.  The enemies stood no chance and you were a literal killing machine. It felt almost liberating being so overpowered in that game that you were essentially untouchable.  All along the way you find these bits of lore that the demons have written detailing how you are their coming apocalypse and how much they fear you.  It was an amazing power trip and I had a really good time with it.  

This time around, you play as the same character with basically the same premise. Like all of the other Doom games, Eternal is a first-person shooter where you explore different environments while searching for collectables and upgrades until you enter a combat arena where you square off against waves of demons. The gory and gruesome glory kills from Doom 2016 return that will allow you to refill your health while you battle.  You still have your array of weapons like the shotgun, chain-gun, BFG, rocket launcher, etc., and they all have multiple upgradeable firing modes and secondary abilities.  You can jump, grapple, and use launching pads to bounce all around the combat arenas that are more designed as a fun playground for combat.  At first, it seems like a continuation of Doom 2016 with more of a good thing.  However, everything isn't exactly as it seems this time around.  This leads me to my first issue with Doom Eternal.

1) Doom 2016 was so good and well thought out that the developers, ID software, didn't know what to do to improve upon it so they just started adding a bunch of new abilities.

Not only do you have to glory kill enemies to refill health, now you also have to chainsaw them to refill your limited ammo.  The chainsaw uses gasoline that you can find scattered around the levels. In order to kill larger enemies, you need a full gas tank of fuel to saw them apart, but lesser enemies will have to be killed constantly to keep your other weapons loaded with ammunition.  Luckily, the chainsaw always has a minimum amount of fuel that will replenish over time, but you'll need to keep an eye on its timer.  You also have a flamethrower that also works on a timer that you use to make enemies drop armor.  There's the super punch that allows you to instantly melee kill enemies if it's charged up.... There's the grappling hook that pulls you toward enemies, multiple shot modes for every weapon, multiple type of grenades you can cycle through that are also on a timer, a sword that you can collect charges for to instantly kill enemies, and probably several more that I'm forgetting. 

Overwhelmed? Me too. This is a whole lot of mechanics at your disposal that you would think would be really fun to use after you get the hang of things, but they honestly feel like they get in the way of what would make the game fun. This leads me to my second issue with the game.

2) Doom Eternal wants you to play it the way IT wants.  Not the way you want.

In Doom 2016, you got thrown into these awesome combat arenas where you felt like this overpowered machine that could just mow over waves of enemies in the most awesome ways possible.  You were constantly trying out new weapons, getting in close and killing enemies, and stringing together these awesome kill chains.  In Eternal you're constantly low on resources to the point where you spend a lot of your time running AWAY from enemies instead of running TOWARD them. You run out of ammo, so you can't kill anything.  So you have to run around until your fuel for your chainsaw recharges.  Then, you chainsaw an enemy, get some ammo and dive back in.  But you take a few hits and your health is low, so you try to glory kill an enemy to get more health, but you get swarmed in the mean time so you run away.  You use your flamethrower to get some armor to stay in the fight, but now you're low on ammo again, but your fuel hasn't recharged.  You get low on health, but you can't damage the enemy because you have no way to deal damage with no bullets, so you run away from them waiting for your fuel to recharge so you can get some ammo... so you can shoot them... so you can glory kill them to get more health... rinse... repeat...   It starts to feel more like a puzzle game where you need to figure out the correct order to use your skills and which optimal weapons to use in every fight if you want success.  This leads you to dying a lot where you're thrown into situations that seem overwhelming unless you already know what's coming.  This leads me to the 3rd fault of the game.

3) The game feels like you need to memorize the combat encounters rather than improvise your way through them.

That's what made Doom 2016 so fun.  All the mindless killing and the awesome flow state you get into when you're in the thick of the battle.  Now, there are enemies that appear half-way through combat encounters that summon infinite baddies (the Archvile for you old school fans) until they're eliminated and there are totems that buff all the enemies that are hidden around the arena.  Both of these you'll have to search for in a frenzy to destroy them before things get too out of hand.  Almost every time one of these archviles appeared, I died because I had no idea they were coming and flooded the area with too many enemies.  I got tired of repeating the same combat scenarios over and over again until I slowly memorized where everything was and the correct order to kill everything.  It was exhausting.  It artificially adds a lot more difficulty to the game that's rather off-putting.  A lot of people will say the game is "harder."  It's not really much harder, it's just a lot less forgiving if you don't play each scenario in it's most optimal way.

I guess the developers realized how demoralizing these combat encounters were because they decided to book end them with a ton of platforming segments. These were the worst part of the game and almost made me quit several times. They often require the use of swinging from suspended poles, dashing through the air, hitting air currents, and wall grappling and climbing.  Many times, I would waste several of my extra lives during these platforming segments that were supposed to be easy... but I never felt like the controls were good enough.  This is the next issue.

4) Precision platforming in first person needs better controls than Doom Eternal provides.

Having to swing from bar to bar, dash to a crumbling wall, jump off it and dash through the air a number of times before going through a ring to replenish your dashes, etc., feels like a parkour obstacle course and would be better suited for a 3rd person action game rather than Eternal.  It just never feels like it works and I'm shocked that such a large portion of the game is devoted to it.  Not only that, but there are some swimming segments in the game that evoked an audible groan and eyeroll from me. I like exploring in Doom.  In fact, that's one of the big draws of the franchise.  But, I don't want to Ninja Warrior my way over giant bottomless pits in every level.

The last issue I have with the game doesn't involve gameplay.  The game requires a day one patch to add a bunch of content and Bethesda, the publishers, require you to make a Bethesda account before they'll let you play the game (even in single player) unless you completely disconnect your console from the internet.

5) Don't add DRM to single-player games.

Some of us gamers go back and replay their games 5, 10, even 20 years later.  You don't need to add online components to prevent players from accessing the single player content years down the road.  Bethesda's recent practices with requiring you to be online to play single player games has been so bad that it's actually deterring me from buying anymore of their games. What are you supposed to do when the online servers go down a few years from now.  At least you can still access the game by turning off your internet connection, but you shouldn't even have to do that.

In general, the game isn't as much fun as Doom 2016 and feels very tedious and like a chore to play. When I play Doom, I want to charge into the fight and wreck some demons.  I don't want to run away from combat waiting for abilities to recharge and looking for weak enemies to kill to heal myself or to get ammo.

Story:

Like I mentioned, you once again play as the Doom Slayer.  After the events of the reboot, you find yourself on a space station and realize that Earth is being consumed by Hell.  You have to find all of the Hell Priests that are hidden not only on Earth, but also in other dimensions and kill them to prevent all of this from happening.  It's a serviceable story and does a good enough job of carrying the action forward.  But, unlike the reboot, this time you're inundated with a ton of lore that's full of zany terminology that recounts the history of the Earth, the demons, the Doom Slayer, space exploration, and alien race, energy consumption, and a whole bevy of ideas that ID software have decided to include to try to fill in every nook and cranny of all the cracks in their story.

6) Show me the story, don't tell me.

There must be over 100 pages of text that you can collect in the game that recount all of this complicated information about what's going on and how everything came to be.  Now, don't get me wrong, I like lore in games.  The Dark Souls games don't tell much of a story but do some fantastic world building with the lore you gain from the clues you find around the world.  Even Doom 2016 did a great job building the mystique of the Doom Slayer by leaving fragments of information hidden around the maps.  But, this time ID software jumped the shark with the amount of information they dumped on us.  It feels like all of this should have been compiled into some sort of fictional history of DOOM and published as a novel (a la Tolkien's The Simarillion) or something similar.  Most reviews I read and watched said they stopped paying attention to the story after a while.  I'm no exception.

Presentation:

There's not much to find fault with in this case.  Doom Eternal is probably the best looking of all of the PS4 games.  I was playing this game at the same time I was playing some PS5 games, and Doom Eternal holds up against them and even looks better in a lot of cases.  The graphics and textures are sharp and clean and the game runs at a pretty steady framerate.  Some of the areas like the hub area between levels and Exultia are beautiful and a nice departure from the heaviness of the rest of the game.

The music is industrial with a bit of a Djent flair and is right in line from what you would expect from a Doom game.  It serves its purpose, but I didn't especially find it memorable or catchy. This is coming from a life-long metal fan, but I found the riffs and chord progressions to be banal and almost intentionally pedestrian. At times the music lifted the experience, but mostly it felt phoned in.

Conclusion:

Doom Eternal is a great looking game that is bloated and inferior to the game that came before it.  The combat isn't as fun and has a really repetitive gameplay loop that sucks all the enjoyment and enthusiasm right out of me.  I could rarely play more than an hour at a time without getting frustrated or bored and it took me many sessions over several months to finish the experience.  While the game did start to pick up in the second half as I became more experienced with the mechanics and reconciled myself to play the way the game wanted me to, it never reached the grand highs that the critics lauded in their reviews.  It's still a decent game and there is some fun to be found there, but it doesn't hold a candle to Doom 2016.

Final Status: Beaten

Final Score: 7/10 (disappointing)

 

Tower of Guns (PS4) Review

Tower of Guns (PS4) Review

Release Date: 4 March 2014

Date Played: 29 November 2021

Tower of Guns is one of those games that jumped onto the rogue-lite train back in the middle of the 2010s.  It seemed like every indie game that was being released back then had to worm its way into that category in order to grab a little hype or be relegated to the forgotten games purgatory every developer fears. Being a huge fan of rogue-lites I'm not one to complain. Several of my favorite games of all time are rogue-lites and I find them engaging and really like their mechanics. In case you didn't know, rogue-lites (or rogue-likes) are games that take inspiration from the old-school ASCII game, Rogue, and have similar features like randomized levels, items, weapons, enemies, and stats that reset every time you start over with a new game.  Often they also have a perma-death mechanic where if you die, you lose all progress and have to start from scratch each time.  Rogue-lites tend to be less severe with these mechanics and incorporate unlockable skills, items, and abilities that can be collected in a new run to give you an edge.  Yes, each run is new, but the pool of items available to you gets stronger each subsequent time you play.  I think this more forgiving spin on the "rogue" formula really helps with the frustration of losing your progress and gives even "failed" runs a sense of progression.  After a crushing defeat it's a lot easier to pick up the controller for another run knowing that you might be able to grab that awesome weapon you unlocked last time you played.

Grip Games, the developer of Tower of Guns, decided to take these mechanics and combine them with the twitch based first person shooter genre to create something that hadn't really been seen previously in the glut of 2D rogue-lites that were saturating the market. It steps away from the side scrolling action games, dungeon crawlers, and strategy games that dominated the genre and instead opts for intense and twitchy gameplay like Quake or Unreal Tournament to get its point across. Does it succeed?

Not really...  The first give away that Tower of Guns may not be a top-tier game is that it was published by Soedesco.  To me, they are the current equivalent of LJN publishing from the NES days.  Almost every game I've played that they published felt like a total cash grab and is usually a warning sign to stay far away. Their games are full of  all of the hallmarks of a budget title with subpar gameplay, cheap graphics, bugs, and unoptimized performance.   Unfortunately, Tower of Guns is no exception.  While the game does control well and is thankfully bug free, it doesn't offer much more to entice you to sacrifice your time to it.

You begin each run by selecting a gun with a silly name like "Peas 'n Carrots" or "Portable Pizza Oven."  At first, there are only these two guns to choose from, but as you make more and more progress with your runs, you can unlock eight more to round out the arsenal.  In addition to this, you also select a perk to give you a little bonus (or hinderance to your gameplay).  These range from things like starting with a triple jump, negating fall damage, etc.  There are plenty to unlock and they can drastically change the game. Also, there are several modes of gameplay available from the onset like Endless mode where you keep looping the game until you die, Dice Roll, where you get a random effect applied to you in every room, Hotfoot, where the floor is lava, and several more that change up the gameplay.  After you select this loadout, you dive right into the game and set out to defeat the titular Tower.

You'll notice that the art style of the game relies heavily on cell-shaded graphics with a gritty industrial look to them.  This can often been a wise choice when playing a game because this graphical style tends to hold up well over time and not look so dated years down the road. You can feel that this was the developer's intention and they really wanted people to play this game for years without it showing it's age.  And, just like the rogue-lite gameplay bandwagon, they also jumped on the cell-shaded graphical bandwagon. Ironically, once all developers learned this, it seems like it was a feature of every game for about a decade and in hindsight seems to date the games even more from that time period rather than guard them against the aging graphics they all so desperately feared.  Anytime I see a cell-shaded FPS game these days, I feel like I'm playing something from 2010... and I know I'm not alone in feeling this way. Not that that's a bad thing, per se.  It's just that what once made something stand out from it's peers soon began to make it blend in with the crowd.  Other than the cell-shaded graphics, the Tower of Guns also relies on a cartoony and exaggerated art style that give a bit of a whimsical feel and serves the tongue-in-cheek attitude the developer was aiming for. This kind of clashes with the gritty and metallic look of everything and makes the game a bit harder to take seriously.  In my opinion, a bright and colorful aesthetic would have suited the game much better and helped it stand out from it's peers. 

As for the gameplay, it's pretty basic.  You enter into the Foyer, which almost always serves as the first floor of the tower.  Each floor is populated by a handful of rooms that you have to traverse in order to progress.  These rooms act like a series of gauntlets that give the game an arena-shooter feel.  You'll have to run, dodge, strafe, hop, and shoot your way through each progressively tougher room.  The sheer number of enemies and bullets can often be overwhelming and comically over the top.  Some rooms will have upwards of 350 enemies in them and you can get swarmed and cornered pretty easily.  Luckily, you don't always have to kill them all and can instead sprint for the door to the next room, shoot it to unlock it, and then dive into the next arena.  As you kill enemies, they will drop coins, healing items, gun XP, active item fuel, and the occasional stat increase.  The gun XP serves to level up your weapon (to a max of 5) to give you a bit more firepower.  Getting hit causes you to lose gun XP, so you'll want to stay on your toes and try to avoid getting hit as much as possible.  With the crazy amount of bullets and enemies flying around the levels, this isn't exactly and easy task and you'll need to have quick reflexes to mitigate all the damage coming your way.  The stat upgrades you find can be what makes or breaks a run.  These include things like adding an additional jump height, armor, damage up, luck up, xp increases, and more.  Collecting these is essential and you'll need to get lucky with what drops as well as have some decent skill to string together a successful attempt. You'll also encounter items to purchase for the coins you've collected.  These are usually great and you'll want to grab as many of them as possible.  This is usually easier said than done as the "shops" are hidden in difficult to reach areas or tucked away out of sight.  Keep an eye open, or you'll miss them.

As a sort of cruel joke, the developers decided to include a Difficulty UP stat increase to buff your enemies.  Picking up one of these can often kill a run and derail your attempt.  With all of the chaos going on during the game, it's quite easy to accidentally grab one of these as your trying to collect all of the items that drop from your fallen enemies.  Honestly, It's very frustrating and caused me to fail an attempt that was otherwise going extremely well up to that point.  These feel like the developers are giving you a big middle-finger as an insult and the game would have been much better without them. In a fast paced game like this, you want to keep moving and grabbing all the items the enemies drop before they disappear.  You can't do this and focus on killing the copious amounts of baddies when you have to constantly be on the lookout for a powerup that serves no purpose other than to troll you when you accidentally grab it. Yes, I know these sorts of items are found in lots of other rogue-lite games.  But, it doesn't suit this sort of gameplay well and detracts from your enjoyment rather than giving you some sort of crazy item that you have to make due with. It doesn't add a challenging mechanic, or wavy shot, or some other effect that throws a wrench into your gameplay but is potentially able to be overcome. Often these items have the chance to have crazy synergies in other games that can make a memorable and extremely fun run in the right circumstances.  That's not the case here.  Tower of Guns has no synergies I've seen and this item only makes the enemies take more damage and deal more damage.  It's a lazy item and shouldn't be in the game.  

After clearing a floor, you'll face off against a giant boss that is, just like every single other enemy in the game, a combination of gun barrels and spikes.  They usually involve the same strategy of strafing around and avoiding their shots while blasting them away.  Often, they are pretty cool looking and can have some interesting mechanics to them; but after a few runs, they all seem to blend together.  Once you kill one of these bosses, they'll drop an active item that you can use.  Unfortunately, these are usually quite underwhelming and often have a very narrow usage like insta-killing a specific type of enemy or making you shoot faster but be unable to move. Sadly, each time you grab one of these active items, it replaces the previous one.  So, each time you kill another boss, you only get a new choice of item rather than adding another item to your arsenal and getting stronger. As for the repetitive nature of the bosses, the same can be said of the general enemies in the game.  They are usually just turrets that fire different projectiles at you, floating enemies that home in on your location in large numbers to point-blank shoot you, or some form of tank.  It's only slightly funny that everything is a gun, because it is a Tower of Guns, after all.  But, I think the game could benefitted greatly by adding some additional variety rather than put all of it's money on the meme-like nature of the everything is a gun concept.

Eventually, you'll fight your way up to the top of the tower and face off against a final boss.  This takes about an hour to complete and each run usually gets a lot easier as your progress and collect more and more upgrades... if you make it that far.  The game could use some more balancing and you'll either find yourself very underpowered and don't make much progress.  Or, you'll be so overpowered that the game feels like it has no challenge at all and you'll just blow through room after room with little effort. Even then, though, you never feel... awesome.  I think part of the issue with making the player never feel empowered is a result of the guns themselves.  They don't really feel substantial or exciting and usually have very slow shot speed.  It's very frustrating to fire a gun and see the bullet slowly move towards its target for several seconds only to have the mark mindlessly move out of the way at the last second.  I almost always felt like the guns were working against me instead of for me and I was finding myself having to get right up in the enemy's face to make my shots connect.  This, of course, led to me taking additional damage.

As for the story, there really isn't much to say.  Every run, I guess you're playing as one of several characters that's trying to ascend the tower for some sort of revenge purpose.  The dialog is not very interesting and it's difficult to keep track of what the character is saying anyway due to all the busy chaos going on during gameplay. I mostly ignored it, honestly. It's nice that the developer tried to put a little effort (though poorly executed and misplaced) into the game to give it some sort of flair.  But, that effort could have been better spent elsewhere.  To pair with the lackluster story, we're also given a very lackluster soundtrack of mostly drones and ambient sounds.  It stands in stark contrast to the high intensity gameplay and really brings down the overall energy of the experience.  The game really could have done with some pumping and catchy music to keep you engaged during the countless attempts the developer intends for you to play.  It's a huge letdown and was a grievously missed opportunity.

So, what's my final conclusion.  Tower of Guns is a good idea that is just executed poorly.  It's not really a bad game, it's just very boring and unimaginative.  I don't even know how you go about creating a game that has hundreds of bullets firing at you from all angles while you dodge and move out of the way (all while returning fire) and yet still makes the experience feel...deflated.  All of the levels of the tower and all of the enemies look and act the same. You'll encounter the same enemies in the last room of the game that you encounter in the first room. There are probably 12-15 enemies that are just recycled for the entire duration and it's very noticeable before very long. Also, The guns feel weak and unfun to shoot and the upgrades are usually underwhelming.  The unlockables you get for your loadouts feel uninspired and too familiar.  And finally, the graphics, art style, and music are too derivative of things gamers have seen over and over again that it's almost impossible to describe without saying something like, "Imagine Borderlands but with no characters."  All of this just adds up to an underwhelming experience that really isn't worth more than a couple of hours of fun at most.  After you've conquered the tower for the first time, it feels like you've seen everything the game has to offer... and that's the worst thing a rogue-lite could possibly do.  

Final Status: Beaten 

Final Score: 5/10 (Mediocre)