Oh boy, this game is a bit of a mess, and really hard to review, so hard in fact, it took me over 10 days to do it. (Sorry for my inactivity btw)
Let's get to it, Vanquish: The Adventures of Lady Exton (That's a mouthful) it's a platformer that needs some serious polish and better coding, because, as I played it, I found it a mess. I hate platformers, but I can admit that the Marios and the Megamans are some really good games, but this one is just...
You play as Madam Lady Exton, a beautiful woman living in a steampunk era, who mysteriously wakes up in a cell, after the two seconds it took to break out, she finds that her parasol has a gun, which isn't strong enough to kill anything, and that it's her duty to... to... to what? I must've missed the story, because I haven't found any, Exton is just killing innocent annoying robots and that's it, after 10 levels there's an underwhelming boss, and between that you go through underwhelming levels.
Obviously, it's a platformer, you jump on platforms, and you shoot thingies until you reach the end of the level, quite simple, so how do you screw this up? By programming it in under two hours, the controls are floaty, it seems like an ice level all the time, and the jumps have a small but noticeable delay, which gets old fast, the top of the screen is solid, so you'll crash your head on it frequently, and when you do, you can't do the double part of you jump, and you'll plummet to your death.
The enemies are more annoying than difficult, they clutter the screen, making it impossible to avoid damage, and any damage cancels your jump, removing all momentum and killing you with gravity. You do have a really generous health bar though, but your gun deals next to no damage, taking over 10 shots to kill an enemy, which the levels are full of, too full. So it takes a lot of time to get through one, and it's just so unrewarding, you just reach a balloon and go to the next level, 30 times, that's it. And the background moves back when you go forward, and that's worse than it seems, it actually nauseates me, and gives me a very bad headache.
With some polish it could be good, maybe increase the damage, remove the ceiling, and remove some of the clutter of some levels. But I'm not a game designer.
The art style is actually good, really good even, everything is well drawn, the enemies are a bit too simple, but it's overall good, the background looks nice and Exton herself looks good as well, the animations are a bit on the lazy side, they aren't really fluid and nice, but it can be forgiven.
The music though, it's the best part of the game, it's just ear candy, it loops quickly, but it's really good, the composer did a great job. The sound effects on the other hand... There's just one, the gunshot, other than that, none. Which makes the game quite awkward at times, because of the silence.
Overall, my opinion of the game could easily change, but it won't for now, because I haven't heard of the developer for 4 months, so they could've very well abandoned it, but I'm none to judge.
I don't recommend the game as is.
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