Flawed eye candy..
The Rad
- Oozes style. OOZES.
- Solid combat mechanics.
- Boss fights are pretty rad.
The Bad
- Mostly nonsense plot.
- Aggressively bad camera angles.
If I see Suda 51s name on anything I have a few expectations.
I expect it to be a bit rough around the edges.
I expect it to be more style than substance.
But I expect to like the style so much that I forgive its shortcomings.
And like prior Grasshopper Manufacture games the same is true here, albeit to a lesser extent. I dig the style. I dig the aesthetics. I dig the soundtrack. In theory I even dig the characters, but in execution they’re far more bland than you’d hope.
I feel like they lack a lot of personality.
Previous GM games have had some of the more memorable game characters ever in my book, but I’d be surprised if I remember anything about Mondo Zappa in a year - except maybe that undeniably cool name.
The game tells a story that I really couldn’t begin to describe.
It’s often terrible and incomprehensible. You play a hitman of sorts.
You perform executions, you get money. There’s unicorns.
Mansions on the moon. Train bosses. Hell I don’t really know.
But it all leads to a lot of sword fighting.
And the combat is actually pretty decent, if nothing that hasn’t been done before. You have a light, quick attack. You have a block breaking heavy attack. You dodge and perform swift counters. You fill a meter that lets you use your secondary weapon or perform devastating one-hit kills. It’s simple, it’s fun.
But it’s marred by a terrible camera.
I feel like it’s typically way too close to the action.
Which is fine when there’s maybe two or three guys.
But the game doesn’t have a problem with throwing out the enemies in droves and it can be a bit hard to follow the action and effectively defend yourself when you can’t see half the guys you’re battling.
In most sections of the game you’re given free reign as to how you care to deal with your foes, but there’s at least a couple of sections where you’re forced to use your gun hand and this is far less enjoyable than simply sword fighting. The guns don’t feel good to shoot, the aiming feels far too loose. It just isn’t fun.
As you play the game you’ll accrue gems with which to upgrade and purchase new abilities, of course. And there’s also uh… There’s this thing called Gigolo mode.
You find yourself with a lady.
And you’re basically trying to check her out without her noticing, as you work up the guts to give her a gift. Guts being a meter that fills. If she catches you leering too much it’s all over. And you have to give her gifts she likes, of course. I don’t think there’s anyway you can KNOW what she likes without using these Gigolo glasses that not only fills up the guts meter quicker and tells you what stuff they like - but also has X-ray vision so you can see the gals in their underwear.
I can’t imagine with the current attitude towards such things in the games media that this is going over too well - but I personally don’t mind it. It’s dumb fun. And hell, the girls are attractive enough. Just be warned that this is a thing that exists and if you’re of a mind to be bent out of shape because of it, maybe give the game a miss.
Hell maybe give the game a miss anyway.
I didn’t hate it, but it didn’t grab me the way previous Grasshopper Manufacture games did and there are better character action games out there.