Shade

It's no secret that I'm not a fan of RTS games.  I find them, for the most part, unengaging and unintuitive.  There are exceptions, of course, but my problem is with the starting point.  I don't like having other people do my dirty work for me.  If I want a bunch of people dead, I want to have the pleasure of tossing their innards around myself, not just ordering a bunch of samurai to do it for me.

You know what kind of game understands this?  The beat 'em up.  Games like Double Dragon and Kingdom Hearts (that's right, it's not an RPG, despite what people want you to think) know that the best way to clear a room full of baddies is to bash 'em into the ground yourself.  Don't get me wrong, those games have their flaws too, but they are rarely unengaging.  That's because you tend to have complete control over your character, and, by extension, the events of a battle.

So now, here's Shade.  A beat 'em up that renders everything I just said completely moot by being as engaging as an RTS.

I'll start this review, with complete disregard the for context of my intro, the way I always do when I'm afraid I'll be done blogging before a scroll bar even appears on my page: talking about the aesthetics.  The game looks fine when it's not bugging out.  The main problem is that your character(s) have a very strong love of walls, so good luck getting them to obey orders whenever you make the mistake of directing them within the same postal code of a building or lamppost.

And then of course there are the mechanics.  This game can serve as a fine lesson in how not to make the player feel like he or she has control.  Instead of just moving your minions around the screen, you use WASD to vaguely suggest where they should head off to, which only exaggerates the problem of wall hugging ghosties.

The biggest complaint I have, though, is that the only attack method you have is to mash the space bar.  That's it.  If you have enough ghosts following you around, you'll kill people.  If you don't, you have to travel back to the middle of the map to get some and then you can kill people.  It's about as dull, formulaic and uninteresting as a beat 'em up can get.

That's all I got for now.  Until next time, stay repetitive repetitively.

Links
Ghouls on Parade: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=25916