Sang-Froid: Tales of Werewolves

Never before has a video game ever so thoroughly exemplified the majestic importance of being a Canadian, getting drunk, and fighting wolves with an axe. Sang-Froid brings a fresh take on the old Base Defense genre. It's like putting Dungeon Keeper's trap system into one of the old Rainbow Six games where you actually had to plan the mission yourself, but then add RPG style skill development to the characters. The gameplay is challenging but extremely fun. I really enjoyed playing this. The story on the other hand, is terrible. I mean, the plot is flat and the dialog is just abysmal. The characters get little development and not one of them has a decent line of dialog either in text or in voice acting. That being said, so what? After my first play through, I skipped those scenes anyways. It's the gameplay that I enjoyed the hell out of. Aside from that, I feel as though I should bring up the art style. Although not the most developed style, a large part of the graphics are hand drawn or painted. That and the music is atmospheric and entertaining. I love the main theme.

You can play either of the two brothers, which is used as a difficulty setting. You have a birds-eye map to place your traps during the day and at night, if the traps are placed well, you will have a reduced amount of enemies to fight with your slow loading gun and your stamina draining ax. Planning is key otherwise you will be overrun by wolves and other foul beasts. The cut scene animations are not great, characters are like paper dolls moved on the screen rather than rendered 3d models and the main menus are kind of grainy and contrast against the game art they are laid over. But once in the game, the characters and the world are 3d and the game plays well and is a lot of fun.

This game earns all three stars for its use of atmosphere, style, and just all around novel ideas. However, "Werewolves," loses its charms once combat begins. Frustrating, even, isn't the word. While the planning, Tower defense, section of the game is rewarding if you see the hordes of enemies bottle necked into a trap, the game loses steam when you have to stand your grand and swing your axe. Instead of using a simple, Mark/unmarked, system alla Dark Souls, Werewolves just has you swinging wildly and over swinging your target at every turn. Maybe, they thought this was the proper balance because your hero is a drunk logger and not a life-trained assassin, but it really makes the game an awful button masher instead of a game that could have really shined on both sides of its gameplay. While Melee is awful, ranged weapon aren't that much better, as they limit you to strangely generous but all over the place hit boxes that force you to almost learn a faultly logic of leading the target beyond what should work. What's really disappointing is that I want to LOVE this game, because of its originality, but the design feels like the combat was half-assed or purposely handicapped to heighten the importance of the "Day Time Tower Defense." Either way, its a bad job. Overall, this game needs to played just for its original take on the tower defense genre. I purchased it on sale, but I don't think in its current state its worth over $10, currently $15 as of this writing, but when this game goes on sale its worth a play. I Just the hope if the developers consider a sequel they fix the combat system as it could have been an awesome game and original experience.

So since everybody is cheering the gameplay here (and indeed, well deserved) I thought I should send out a word of warning about the less admirable aspect aka the technical side. There is no windowed mode. Believe it or not. It's like in the old DOS days. Alt-Tab out of the game won't let me return to full screen anymore either. Devs recommend to disable the windows key (!) before playing in order to avoid accidentally returning to windows. If you're using a 4:3 display, there is only one resolution available. Max resolution for 16:9 is 1080p, so good luck with your new 2560x1440 display. Loading times, especially on start-up, can take up to a few minutes depending on your computer. Unfortunately, all those issues haven't been addressed since the release or are dismissed by the devs, so no hope for a patch here, which is sad. Sang-Froid would deserve better.