The Deadly Tower of Monsters

I just recently fully covered this game on the PS4 for my Twitch channel. I am a sucker for cheesy B-Movies and they nailed it. So many great tributes to films, TV shows, and just SciFi in general. Great visuals, dialog, sound effects, and old-school film quirks. The only issue was some camera problems on some areas, but overall one of the best spoof games I have played in years.

This is a nice BTA / platformer, developped by Zeno Clash developpers ACE Team. As often with ACE's team, the gameplay is not very interesting. It is varied enough (often switches between different phases : pure platforming, combat, top-down shooter) not to get too tedious, but all of these really lack depth. It should not be too much of a problem 'though, because the story experience is very short (around 3 to 4 hours, less if you rush) so you will not feel you are doing the same thing over and over too much. This is mainly thanks to the original and refreshing background and presentation (you play as a movie character, and the narrator is the director, commenting realtime), solid writing and voice acting (expect a few laughs) and artistry work. It's hard to describe, but like Zeno Clash, it looks like nothing else (well, maybe the movies the game is referencing too), ACE's Team artists are really talented ones. If money is a concern: gameplay-wise I think there exist far better games in that 13€ price tag (with much more depth and replay value). This is in no way a bad game 'though: you should have a lot of fun while it "lasts".

I didn't really have big expectations so I was pleasantly surprised that the game was not only much more self ironic than I thought but also actually quite a good game by itself. The most fascinating aspect of the game is that it's somewhat open worldish. Even though there are some in-/outdoor transitions, the complete tower is one big continuous space - which is pretty unique for this kind of game. Even just before the final boss fight, you can jump from the top down to the ground. You can also teleport to all the checkpoints at any time which allows you to go back and forth to look for hidden loot. Also there are some bonus challenges like jumping down the tower through loops or hitting hidden targets. The game actually encourages you to jump down the tower by allowing you to teleport back to your previous position. There are some issues though: firstly the audio is screwed. All the dialogues including the director's comment are much too silent and nearly inaudible with any Windows speaker setup. Secondly, the game doesn't remember the non-VHS settings for video and audio. Thirdly, when leaving the game after reaching a certain checkpoint, it tends to forget about the last checkpoint or certain events (mid boss fights, achievements like coins, loops or targets). Last but not least, there is a lack of puzzles or Metroidvania like use of special abilities to progress. There are a few points where you need to use a special ability of a certain character to continue, but these are too few and too obvious. Usually, backtracking with a new ability will just give you a few extra coins. Generally, there is not much to discover apart from the route up and the game is relatively short. So I had a lot of fun playing it but at the end I was a bit disappointed that it was already over with my character(s) only in the middle of their potential development. I kinda hope there will be a successor of some kind with a bigger, more complex world and more Metroidvania like puzzles.

This game is the best example of stunning level design, amazing character design, and overall art quality. But it sucks at some game design decisions. For example, you need to use some skills of your characters to pass some gates, but it is happening few times and looks like an annoyance than a feature. Some places are hard to navigate due to some crazy-ass platforms. And, oh, you can`t turn off directors commentary... Still this game worth its money. Before I bought this game, I didn`t know that there is one huge, spectacular world which is really fun and rewarding to explore. So I got this going for me, which is nice.