Slain: Back From Hell

I don't usually write reviews, but seeing as "Slain!" released today, I thought I'd go ahead and try and save some interested folks some money. With that said, where to begin? At the beginning, i suppose. So I load open the game, and BAM! Immediately I'm sitting at the menu screen, no production credits, no intro, nothing. Okay, a little non-traditional, but no big deal, right? You got a nice background art, the big "Slain!" title card, and some menu options: New game, Continue, Options, Credits. Seems fine. I scroll through each option and the first thing I notice is how unresponsive the menu control is. Yes, they managed to mess up the menu control. Often pushing the arrow keys doesn't change the highlighted option. And if you scroll down below "Credits", the menu highlighter will disappear all together, as if highlighting a secret, invisible option. But it's not, it's just gone. To make matters worse, several options in the menu don't even work. Selecting "Credits" simply causes my game to freeze. And inside of the "Options" menu, it does not allow me to enter the "Input" menu. But whatever, the menu is bad, who cares, right? It's all the about the gameplay! And man, is the gameplay terrible! Remember when I said the menus were unwieldy? Your character is even worse! The movement is incredibly strange: simply tapping or pushing the key does not cause you to move, instead, you must hold the key down momentarily. This makes edging forward (i.e. to the edge of a platform for a jump) or backing up (i.e. to evade an enemy) difficult. You do have a backdash though, although it is very sluggish as well, and only seems to work about half the time anyways. Running out of space, time for quickies. Vague tutorial tells you nothing. Soundtrack was pretty repetitive (I love Celtic Frost!). Combat is VERY simplistic (press Q, repeat). Lots of visual glitches. Spelling errors (though as tho). Lots of others If you're looking for a game in this style try Odallus instead.

This game was pretty terrible when it first released. Now, they've clearly spent some time revamping it into something that is quite enjoyable. I've only played for a little bit so far, so I can't comment on the total package, but it's no replacement for the old Castlevanias yet, but it's getting there. I hope they do a sequel now. The visuals are great, and the music is good, though tracks run rather long on a short loop. Levels probably should've been shorter, or broken up more, but its not a huge deal. Enemy variety is reasonable so far, and the combat (the most improved aspect) is actually interesting and fun now. It's a little on the easy side (though again, I'm not far in yet), but it's so much better than before. Anyway, I need to get to bed now, but I'm looking forward to starting again when I get up. Check this game out!

If you remember a) begging your parents for spare change in the 80s and b) saving up all said spare change and feeding it into an arcade machine and c) feeling exhilarated as your ass handed to you by a brutal, medieval / heavy metal style hack-n-slash platform-er and d) spending the next week begging you parents for more spare change in the hope that another coin or two is all you need to get past that tricky section or end boss then e) now that you are an adult do you f) still feel that need? If "yes" then g) what are you waiting for ?

GOG, please notify people by mail or some other method that they should revisit their reviews. The game fixed its initial horrible state and the developers deserve at least this gesture so that the game's abysmal score can be fixed and people won't stay away from the game because of a score it no longer deserves!

Do you like 2D hand-drown graphics? Do you like heavy metal music album covers, their aestethics and their epic (and just a bit cheesy) take on Norse mythology? Do you mind a little humour? Did you just answer "no" to all questions? Well, you should try Slain all the same, because it is a challenging and rewarding game. Take "Castlevania: Simphony of the Night" beautiful graphics and pump it up to the max, then apply it to a mostly linear level structure. Better yet, for those who remember it, take Psygnosis' "Shadow ot the Beast" approach to platform/action adventure and "Oh my!" visuals: Slain is indeed a worthy successor. Difficult, at times very difficult, some passages requiring many tries and experimenting with different arms and techniques; but, except for some very long areas and a couple of multiboss ending without intermediate check points, Slain is usually quite balanced and not as infuriatingly difficult-for-the-sake-of-being-difficult-then-tell-users-it's-their-fault, as so many recent platformers tend to be (e.g. the ones where developers and fans say "git gud" and try to simply get away with it). Then again, the reward is high: you will want to overcome any difficulties just to see some more of that beautiful, multi-layered art, parallax-scrolling by before your astonished eyes. Notice I did not praise the metal music score: I enjoyed it for the first 30 seconds of every level, then it sadly becomes too repetitive and generic sounding. Let's be clear here: music surely appropriate for the settings and the whole Slain vibe, but none of the pieces really sticks to mind.