Due to my abnormally unforgiving schedule recently, I was not able to keep up with my schedule, as you may have noticed. I was rather religiously adhering to a "2 reviews every other day" policy. In the name of shirking trends, I have vowed to get back on schedule today, no matter how crappy these antibiotics are making me feel. I've estimated that to take about 4 reviews, so these next four are going to gradually decline in quality, kind of like my intestines at the moment.
Return of the Fallen Lords is an arcade shooter wherein you defend a tower and/or yourself from the minions of Thanatos, whose job descriptions are basically "be a jerkface." You move with the WASD keys and shoot hammers in any of 8 directions with the arrow keys.
Especially in Hammerthon mode, the enemy placement seems to be bullet-hell inspired, which seems like it should make for buckets of fun, given the octodirectional projectile you're equipped with. Note, however, that in any decent bullet-hell game, you can move as you shoot. In RotFL, you get locked in place whenever you attack. This is a rather detrimental design choice because it reduces the gameplay to a very formulaic "line your character up with the enemy, tank a few hits inevitably, kill one enemy, rinse and repeat." Since it's infinitely more difficult to determine the path of an unbending diagonal line than it is that of a straight horizontal or vertical line, you're pretty much only going to use 4 of the 8 directions, which makes the game smell of missed potential somewhat.
Other than that, Tower mode feels like a contrived add-on rather than an integral part of the game, which is weird because Tower mode is what is automatically selected when you start the game. You're not given enough indication as to when more tower pieces become available for you to pick up, and the tower has so much health that it's basically equivalent to a baited tree stand and the enemies are deer. As all of us Animal Planet viewers know, that's illegal because it takes all the challenge out of hunting, so why would you work a mechanic like that into the main part of your game?
So yeah, stick to Hammerthon mode, but even there the air is thick with contrivance. Why does the rock elemental seem to wreck the enemies' shops way more than the other elementals that are just as plentiful, for example?
This game does demonstrate a great aesthetic sense with a 3D design that not many games on this list can match, although this game did come out this year, so the technology was in its favor. Even past that, though, there are some cute details that were able to elicit a smile from even jaded ol' me. My favorite is that when you mouse over the "quit" button, your character does an overly dramatic pratfall flat on his back, so at least the last thing I saw before I walked away was charming.
That's all I got for today. Until next time, stay fallin'
Links
grrr smash raar: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=26714
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