Overall Tower 57 hits some sweet spots like art direction, but stumbles badly in other critical game design areas and suffers from a lack luster ending. Right from the outset Tower 57 looks good and plays well, but the longer you engage the game the more clear it becomes the title was either insufficiently play tested or rushed to release. At the start of any game you choose three of six characters which function as your three 'lives'. Each player has their own stats and unique set of weapons. These weapons can then be replaced as you find more, and further upgraded many times to let you really bring the pain. However this is where the good design stops. All the weapons you collect, along with the expensive upgrades you buy, can be lost when a character dies. If you want to hold onto those upgraded weapons you must pick them up with your next character or "life", but this can lead to being forced to discard other upgraded weapons your next character spawns with. The next thing Tower 57 has an issue with is the lives or retrys you're allowed. When any character dies it's possible to resurrect them with a special amber orb, of which there are few, but you can only use them at a resurrection point. However the game's level design discourages and often locks you out from fully exploring levels and finding these items. Frequently a level has multiple routes to get to the same location and upon choosing one, the others lock and become inaccessible. This means there's no guarantee you'll stumble down a path with a hidden orb or other valuable collectable. If that's not bad enough the game also has a habit of auto saving with no notice, making it common to be locked into a boss fight or start a level with only a fraction of health left and no ability to go back for a do-over or restart the level. There's also the series of glitches and ways to get stuck on terrain leading to sudden death which, for reasons already explained, are difficult to recover from. In the end Tower 57 has a lot of instant likeable charm from it's art direction, good pixel animation, and sound design. However, with a weak unrewarding story and the number of both technical and intrinsic design problems it just falls short. It's an alright game, just not one you want to pay full price for.
