#multiplayer action

[quicknewsen-blog]

Deathgarden will be on the PC in mid-August It's difficult to name the genre of asymmetric action games popular: Evolve already stumbled on this formula, but the developers of Deathgarden, apparently, sincerely believe in their project.

[steamgameaday]

Dungeonland (2013)

Genre: Multiplayer Action Developer: Critical Studio Price: Free to Play (All Access Pass available for £7.99, currently £3.99 in the Steam Autumn Sale.)

There's a certain 'do as I say, not as I do' aspect to games journalism. We (if a man with a blog can truly be said to be a games writer) spend our time looking at diverse experiences, scouring content for the interesting and the unique and then say 'yeah, you shouldn't play that' to our readers. We expect others to learn from our experiences and then blindly leap forward to the next game, falling into every pitfall and terrible experience along the way. It's easy to romanticise this; 'we try out games and make recommendations' says the bright-eyed and optimistic games writer 'so that others don't have to', but deep down inside we know the truth. We write about games not because we're saving other people the effort of seeking new experiences for themselves (if the triple-A sequel-led end of the games industry spectrum teaches us anything, people are quite capable of avoiding seeking new experiences on their own merits) but simply because we like the sound of our own voices, and we like to be the ones dictating the received opinions that pass virally from user to user across the Borg-like hivemind that we call social networking.

Getting back to the 'do as I say, not as I do' aspect however, whatever you do, don't play Dungeonland in single player. This was a serious mistake and one that reflects both negatively upon myself as a reviewer and upon the game itself. Whilst the game may give the player the option to go solo, replacing the unfilled co-operative slots with bot-controlled allies (a factor that is admirable in it's attempt, if not in it's execution), the game itself is kind enough to point out that playing like this is a little pointless, stupidly difficult and completely against the whole idea of the game itself. So naturally I proceeded to do just that.

So yes, anyway, Dungeonland is an RPG-themed (not RPG: that distinction is important) multiplayer action game set in an evil theme park. The players can play as either the Heroes (in which case the game is somewhere between an uber-simplified diablo-like hack and slash and Gauntlet) or the Dungeon Maestro, the park's resident evil mastermind whose aim is to make sure the heroes die before they can leave the park with all of the lovely loot they collect from killing his minions. It has three different levels, a be-the-DM mode, and an endless mode, but only one of the original three levels is available for free-to-play gamers, which would normally be called a Demo, but hey, it's 2013 and apparently we can just apply that label to everything now.

The game's simplicity when playing as the heroes is both a boon and a limitation to the game. Players choose from three classes (with several unlockable variations of each), the mage, rogue and fighter, and team up to kill monsters whilst running through a traditional dungeon structure. Each player is equipped with a basic attack, a special ability that requires a full mana bar to use, and a set of potions that act as a secondary special ability with a more limited use. Whilst the players start with three potions each, loot and lives are both shared, and so, if a player dies when there are no more lives on the life-bar the entire team loses regardless of whether there are still capable players in the field. Whilst this makes for a quick and simple style of gameplay, the extremely limited number of abilities makes for a rather limited and repetitive gameplay style, and the lack of any levelling, stats, or loot that isn't just golf makes for a rather shallow experience in the long run.

The game becomes a little different when playing as the Dungeon Maestro. Watching the players from above, the Dungeon Maestro is given a mana bar and dealt a series of cards from a deck purchased and configured by his player. Cards each represent a specific trap or monster spawn for him to place, and each costs mana to use. Whilst the cards are re-dealt slowly over the course of time, if players pass through a doorway, both the mana and the deck are restored, but so are the heroes, and so the dance of attempted destruction begins anew. In all honesty the player's destruction depends a lot more on luck than the DM's tactics, with some selections of cards being a lot more destructive than others, but it's still satisfying to destroy a hero group in under a minute when you get incredibly lucky with your draw, pressing the 'laugh' button to fanfare your triumph with evil, mocking laughter.

I can very much see the appeal of playing this in multiplayer, but having failed to scrape together the required number of people willing to play (or indeed, anyone) and not feeling confident enough to disturb people who actually play the game on a regular basis, I attempted the game in single player. This was, quite frankly, a mistake as not only is Dungeonland a primarily multiplayer game, it is also very difficult and requires actual co-ordination between the players in order to ensure any success. Whilst playing with the bots at a casual level is just about doable, the game requires actual tactics and strategies at higher levels, which the bots just aren't capable of doing. They also seem to be completely incapable of seeing anything that requires anything but hack and slash brutality, such as minigames or the gold scattered around levels. Being the Dungeon Maestro just isn't that fun without actual people to torment, either; without any real human players under those naive-looking avatars it's basically just tower defense with a heavily random element.

So what can you learn from my experience with Dungeonland? Well, probably that you should try it for yourself rather than going entirely with the opinions of a man on the internet you've never met who has so little sense that he's been staying up until 3am writing about video games recently. The gameplay is a little underwhelming, and like I keep saying, you really shouldn't play this without a gathering of friends, but there's certainly heart in the game's production and I can see it being fun with the right people. I should probably also mention that the trading cards are broken and have been for a couple of weeks now, the forums are full of people angry about the fact that a reasonably underwhelming game they paid for is now free-to-play (whilst others are angry about the fact that this 'free-to-play' game is basically a demo), and complaints that the servers are supposedly full of people who want to DM, but nobody who wants to play the actual game side of the game, so make of that what you will.

How long did I play? - 2.0 hours Did I finish it? - No Would I finish it? - This depends a lot on whether I can convince friends to play it next time I try to get a LAN party together, but as I just bought a PAYDAY four-pack, we may already be covered for that eventuality.

[steamgameaday]

Dollar Dash (2013)

Genre: Multiplayer Action Developer: Candygun Games Price: £7.99 (or currently around $5 as part of the Indie Gala DIRT bundle)

Dollar Dash bills itself as a frenetic top down multiplayer versus action game. Well, it's certainly got the top down bit right, and as for 'frenetic', it most definitely is 'fast and energetic in a wild and uncontrolled way' (thanks Google!) with a rather detrimental emphasis on the 'uncontrolled'. Multiplayer action, though? Hah, don't make me laugh. Sure, it's got netcode and you can most definitely host a server, but lets face it; no matter how long you wait for someone to play this game with you're going to be playing with bots. Firstly this is because nobody owns Dollar Dash; despite it having been on a recent IndieGala bundle quite recently I don't have a single friend who has ever played it. Secondly, and more importantly, nobody will ever connect to your game because then they would have to play Dollar Dash, and this would be a massive error.

In Dollar Dash, four players (or, as we have already established, one player and three bots) play as bank robbers and must compete with each other to collect the most cash. Cash, weaponry and equipment is periodically scattered randomly across the playfield, and players must collect the cash and deposit into the vans that occasionally arrive at the edge of the screen. A player can only carry $1000 (ten cash pickups) at a time, and whenever they are hit with a weapon, they will drop $100 of this. As a result, the game is one where players are constantly out to destroy each other in an attempt to hold onto the cash or steal it off of their rivals. There's a wide selection of (oddly mostly nonlethal) weapons including tasers, snowballs, bottles, potted cacti, boulders and so on for players to throw at each other, and a section of traps and other powerups to help players get that edge over the other players.

But it doesn't help because the game just isn't that fun. Most of the time the action devolves into a mess of everyone just hitting each other repeatedly, resulting in everyone being stunned. Actually hitting each other with weapons is difficult at range (the weapons themselves are often so silly as to be entirely useless), and punching is mostly just ineffective. Movement is slow and gets slower as you collect more cash, matches take far longer than you would really hope with this sort of thing, and despite the fact that the game has very little variety and absolutely no depth, the developers seem to expect you to want to manually unlock a ludicrous amount of extra content including perks, hats and even character icons. As lovely as Dollar Dash's cel-shaded take on robbery and comic violence may look, it feels like hard time playing it, and that lack of fun may just be the biggest crime of all.

How long did I play? - 1.0 hours Did I finish it? - No Would I finish it? - No