Games I Beat: The Deadly Tower of Monsters

The Deadly Tower of Monsters
B-Movie Climb and Shoot 'Em Up
1 Player
System: PS4
Developer: ACE Team
Year of Release: 2016
Beaten: November 11th, 2016

Sometimes I see a game title and I write it off entirely, and sometimes this turns out to be a huge disservice to not only the game, but myself. The Deadly Tower of Monsters is one of those cases. It's funny too because as soon as I had the game described for me I was all in. At first glance I assumed it was just another indie title that I wouldn't have time for, but when it was announced for PS+ I finally looked into it. I'm so sorry for turning my back on you for so long you wonderful cheesy B-movie styled game.

This game oozes charm, upon loading it a narrator greets you as if this was a DVD commentary track. The director comments on things happening throughout the game, and sometimes on character actions. It isn't quite as thorough as Bastion's excellent narrator was (have I not talked about Bastion? Fucking go play Bastion), but it also never wears out it's welcome. Actually, in the final bits of the game the director leaves the recording studio and some other guy takes over. His commentary was much less enjoyable.

In Deadly Tower you find yourself climbing, well, a deadly tower, full of monsters! You can jump, dodge roll, shoot guns, bash with melee weapons and use some special actions. You collect more weapons and abilities, and even playable characters, as you make your way up. There's a rudimentary upgrade system, and after maxing out a weapon it doesn't serve much purpose, and maxing out a weapon doesn't take long either. Although you do get some cool stuff like a light saber, a burning trident and a tentacle whip, I never really noticed much of a difference in regards to attack power.

The journey is fairly short, and the combat, puzzle solving and platforming are all pretty basic. Really without the strong atmosphere I don't think I would have given a shit about this game at all. The commentary is excellent, poking fun at both old school film making and mindsets, as well as modern changes to the medium. They went all out though, the monsters in this game are designed to look like they would in an old school B-movie. Just guys wearing masks, or two guys wearing a weird alien costume, or, my absolute favorite, is the stop motion mimicking. Stop motion is that really annoying to pull off film technique where you take a frame of some figures, then move them, then snap another frame, over and over until you have the shot you want. All the non-humanoid creatures in this game move as if they were stop motion creatures. It's simply brilliant. Other cute touches like when a giant gorilla grabs the hero you can clearly see that it's a separate arm some crewman are operating, like how they would have giant (deadly) monsters interact with actors back in the day.

Of course there are some flaws. Sometimes you can get stuck in the environment, which was never too irritating, but happened enough to bring up. Towards the end the game felt a little lacking in game play variety, but that might have just been myself. The worst aspect though is that this game has no co-op, couch or online. There are three playable characters, and I know that some progress is locked in such a way that you need to use a specific character, so they'd have to alter the game a bit to accommodate two characters playing together, but that's no excuse. This is like an old school beat 'em up more or less and would have been amazing with a friend. Especially if they went all out and switched out the tower for a co-op version, and had some exclusive co-op commentary. It probably shouldn't take away from the game, but it did for me. Although my friend and I improvised and co-oped it NES style by just switching off every so often.

The Deadly Tower of Monsters is free if you have PS+ until December. It is beyond worth playing if you don't have to pay for anything. Normally it goes for around fifteen dollars, and I would have had no problem paying that for the experience. It doesn't last long, and the experience gets kind of tedious right at the end, but the charm more than makes up for that to me. If call backs to old, cheap movies doesn't appeal to you, then there isn't much here for you. But what kind of person doesn't want to play a smug fuck wearing a fish tank helmet named Dick Starspeed. Dick. Starspeed.