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Review: Deadly Tower of Monsters

Review: Deadly Tower of Monsters

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ACE Team make really unique games that while might not always be mechanically sound, commit to a tone and style that makes their games quite admirable. If you’ve played Zeno Clash and beat up an anthropomorphic bird-man (No, not Michael Keaton) or squished Napoleon with a giant boulder in Rock of Ages you’ll know the kind of lunacy ACE are known for and their commitment to the style they nail so well. With their newest game Deadly Tower of Monsters, ACE delve into the cheesy absurdity of early to mid 20th century cinema and throws their own spin on it to deliver a rather less than middling game to play but an absolute delight to see.

The premise for Deadly Tower of Monsters is that the game’s story is in fact a movie made by Dan Smith, a self-important and lazy director that is recording a commentary track for the DVD release of the film. Smith spouts behind the scenes escapades of his own incompetence and production woes in the making of Deadly Tower of Monsters, much to the chagrin of its cast and crew. There are laughs to be had in the movie’s corny dialogue and visual gags that hearken back to old-school monster and science fiction movies and the director has his moments though a lot of the throwaway lines don’t quite hit their mark often enough and that bring’s a lot of the game’s charm to the point of exasperation. There’s little variety to the constant commentary by the director, so when a line doesn’t work yet he keeps talking it drags on and on for what can feel like an eternity when the game is really only a handful of hours long.

Climbing the tower is the main focus of Deadly Tower of Monsters, and for a concept so novel it’s disappointing that you’ll do nothing outside of hitting or shooting monsters be they dinosaurs, squids, apes, nuclear ants or fly people hybrids that don’t require a variety of different approaches to defeat. Enemies will be down in a handful of hits, some take a lot more and if you’re not bashing them by button mashing a baton against their head, you’re aiming down the tower shooting them on their ascent.

The game throws a mechanic similar to Jet Force Gemini in which there is side content and collectibles that becomes accessible given you have the correct character to access it. As the lead character Dick Starspeed, you’ve got mines that can explode giant inflatable rocks that open up to new areas and similar powers apply to the other playable characters Scarlet Nova and Robot and if you aren’t using them in that moment you’ll need to perform tedious backtracking to pick up those collectibles you’ll need for upgrades. The weapons at your disposal unfortunately fall into the same issue of a lack of variety between them. There’s different kinds of ray guns, spears and blades that don’t feel in any kind of way imaginative outside of some of them looking like awful prop weapons made from everyday utilities and it’s yet another thing that Deadly Tower of Monsters doesn’t utilize in any entertaining way. They all swing at different speeds and yet there’s little strategy to fighting enemies other than a few knocks and dodge out of the way of their attack.

From a visual standpoint ACE Team’s art direction and animation prowess return with layers of the towers being appropriately themed interpretations of retro-futuristic decor into building movie sets complete with plasma globes and lavishly over-decorated platforms to primitive villages resembling settlements from Planet of the Apes. Its boss and enemy animations have reduced frame-rates, giving off a stop-motion style effect to their movement along with some poorly shot camera angles of giant papier-mâché gorilla arms grabbing actors a la King Kong.

I wish Deadly Tower of Monsters felt like something deeper than a flash in the pan that tries hard to stand out. It’s charm and humour only carries it so far before the gameplay’s dull combat and platforming drag it down to the point of exhaustion.

Have you played this game? Let us know what you thought in the comments!

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