Not a Hero Review
Not a Hero is a 2d platforming action game developed by Roll7. You play as one of nine characters who is working for a giant purple bunny named BunnyLord. He is trying to run for Mayor, so he decides that the way to get voters on his side is by taking down criminals. That is where your character comes in, as for you are the one fighting crime.
Going a little deeper into the story, BunnyLord is running for mayor, and if he doesn't become mayor, the world will (allegedly) end. So to get the popular vote, he decides that his number one priority is to fight crime. So he enlists you to go and fight three different gangs in hopes of getting BunnyLord the popular vote.
When playing the game, the first thing I noticed right off the bat is the writing. Was it good? no. Was it bad? eh. Was it weird? Oh my gosh yes. The writing was trying to be funny by throwing unexpected and unpredictable lines at you, but in the end came off really weird. Stuff like an advertisement for milkshakes with the flavors being 'vanilla, chocolate, wombat' or the bunny saying that he feels 'like dive kicking a mudkipp' reminded me more of the weird kids at school and didn't make me laugh at all. But some of the writing in the game involved voice and that is where I lead into next. For some reason, the bunny made weird Charlie-Brown-parent like noises, while everyone else spoke normally. The bunny's voice was something I didn't mind, but everyone else's voice sounded bad. The voices sounded like they were recorded with earbud mics in a living room, and didn't really sound natural to the game.
The gameplay was nothing spectacular either. There was nothing unique about the levels, and they all started to get repetitive after awhile. The game felt like a rather basic platformer that had some cool moves you could do in the game. Doing such actions like sliding, going into cover, and executions were a lot of fun to do, but also had its own problems. The executions had no problems and proved useful in taking out singular bad guys. The sliding and covering on the other hand had its own problems. While both are fun and useful, both also lead to some frustrations as well. For starters, both sliding and cover were mapped to the same button. While this makes sense for a lot of games, Not a Hero didn't do a great job with the combination. I would often find myself trying to get into cover, but would end up continually sliding, which lead to a lot of frustratingly stupid deaths. Speaking of frustratingly stupid deaths, sliding and going into cover does not cancel a reload. For most characters, when you reload you cannot move, slide, or go into cover at the same time. I get not being able to do both at the same time, but not being able to cancel out the reload at all made the game even more frustrating.
Luckily for me but is still a negative for the game, Not a Hero is really short. Only 21 levels occupy the game, and it only took me around three to four hours to complete every one. Every level has a set of challenges you can complete that will bring you back to the levels, but a lot of the levels had the same challenges to other levels and I found them to not be fun enough to go back to. A few of the challenges would catch my eye and I would passively try to get, but none of them made me want to back and play the level again. But completion of these challenges was not just for satisfaction and achievements. Completing challenges added to the total completion rate of the game, which would unlock the nine characters as the completion percent went up. I didn't play with all nine, but I would say the characters were the highlight of the game. The characters were both unique in personality and in modifiers. My favorite character in the game was Jesus, because not only did he remind me of Jesus in "The Big Lebowski," but because he can slide and shoot at the same time and has a fast execution. But their were things I couldn't do with Jesus, which I was fine with. Having these characters and their different positives and negatives balanced the characters well and made each one unique while also not overpowered.
The verdict: Not a Hero is frustrating, repetitive, weird, and felt like an average platformer. The game is as short as this review, but had no great reason to go back and play the levels again. Some of the mechanics of the game were fun and the characters were a blast, but those positive aspects are not nearly enough for me to recommend this game. Thirteen dollars isn't a bad price point for this game, but my advice would be to save those thirteen dollars and spend it on a better platformer.
