You don’t take anything with you except XP and some skill points when you die, so even if you find the best version of your favorite weapon, you won’t really be able to load it unless one Higher levels allow you to start with different weapons. The levels have amazing colors, but their layouts quickly reappear and cry out for a change of scenery to come.Ī run ends when you die and you have no continuations – the first one is free, but after that, you pay with a temporary accrued currency or go back to base. These roguelite runs, like most things, are better at co-op, but no matter the size of the team, Arcadedon fails to justify the timing you ask. Each of the game’s four bosses is different from each other, but again, nothing will feel fresh to anyone who’s played the game for a few years.īetween every two levels, you’ll re-stock on random weapon shops, increase the difficulty automatically (if you so choose), and regroup to fight for another day. These optional bosses take you out of your level and into your territory, so you can avoid them if you feel weak on a particular run, or jump into the fray for the game’s best loot. There are abundant red barrels, health and ammo pick-ups, and loot chests scattered around, so there’s good reason to spend a moment looking for more enemies and better loot, especially if boss battles are available. But others will freeze enemies in place, allowing you to sneak in and shatter them, or fill them with air and pop them like a water balloon left on the tap. Some guns stand for your specific video game weapons, such as a basic assault rifle or SMG. It’s always something you’ve seen before, but the variety and creativity of weapons combined with the just-keep-swimming level design tames Sunset Overdrive in a way that’s been somewhat goofy for a while. Each Hub level will throw a random objective at you – close the area, destroy these targets, etc. Sometimes aided by very sticky aiming aids, it’s less a game about making hard shots and more about looking fast and cool, while you and three cooperative allies take down dozens to hundreds of enemies each level. Third-person gunplay is the game’s strongest suit. The variety of levels is decent, and the game’s vibrant colors look beautiful no matter what the setting, but each somewhat procedurally generated setting soon reveals its modular parts, and the levels within a particular setting feel very familiar. This allows you to place one level into a booming coastal paradise, a lava-filled hellscape, and then into a cyberpunkish tech dystopia. You do this by going inside an arcade game and fighting a la Wreck-It Ralph. Threatening to put all mom-and-pop shops out of business. You’re out to rescue an indie arcade in an alien world where the benign mega-corp FunFunCo. The setting of the game is changing frequently due to the conceit of the story. When the characters speak, they unfortunately say things like the word ‘hashtag’ out loud.įleksy and Lexi are explorers who talk a lot like the others. It seems as though it was decided somewhere that this world has to justify itself, but given that the range of the story is shorter than this paragraph, I’m not sure why. Grow as you complete quests and never hang out around the game’s central arcade hub. Most of them capture some trope-filled fanaticism, such as a bombastic Zen master or an anarchic punk, and the game spends remarkably long periods of time interacting with these characters who are essentially cardboard cutouts that pose for challenges. The characters named Plug, Label, Jussie and others exist in a world that is almost vibrating from the perpetual dubstep soundtrack leaking from the speakers, and although the color palette is appealing, these characters have nothing to say. Immediately, the game’s grating sci-fi world gives off strong Steve-Busemi-with-a-skateboard vibes. It’s not that they don’t function as a whole It’s that what worked before Arcadegeddon is so carefully-tested that it forgets to add its own unique hook.
Like the Netflix algorithm that spits out actor and genre pairings based on market research, Arcadeddon is a bland mish-mash of several games that you’d better enjoy separately. It’s part co-op booty-shooter, part roguelite, and part fashion show treadmill, borrowing from games like Destiny, Fortnite, and even Hades in different but personally self-evident ways. Instead of playing like any other game you might be familiar with, it’s more like an integration of some of the most modern mechanics, meta-games, and genres that currently dominate the video game world. Arcadegeddon is a fusion of many different genres.