The Deadly Tower of Monsters takes cliches from retro science fiction B-movies and pokes fun at its tropes in a genuinely humorous manner, even if the gameplay ends up tilting towards repetition.
The Deadly Tower of Monsters
Developer: ACE Team
Price: $15
Platform: PS4, PC
MonsterVine was provided with a PS4 code for review.
Right from the start The Deadly Tower of Monsters is dripping with science fiction style. The menu opens up with an egocentric director preparing to do DVD audio commentary for the fictional movie with the same name as the game. This faux commentary acts as narrator and is by far the greatest part. The writing is clever. The jokes hit well and don’t come across as ‘trying too hard’ like comedy sometimes does when making an effort to be intentionally bad. What makes it work so well is how the narration separates itself from the B-movie setup for the game. The director believes his creation is a masterpiece that is able to hold up to the tests of time, and even refers to one scene as “Shakespeare in space.”
The writing wouldn’t be nearly as funny without the cheesy special effects that were apart of every early science fiction movie. Developer ACE Team captures these tropes and brings them from the movie world into a game in a way I’ve not seen before. For example, certain enemies, dinosaurs, giant apes and more are animated at an intentionally lower framerate than the rest of the game. This trick makes the creatures look like they were torn out of a monster movie when stop motion photography was used for special effects. Flying creatures are often seen hanging from wires and monkeys appear as costumed humans. All of these effects are explained by the narration accompanying the gameplay. This intentionally cheesy art design pairs impeccably with the faux director’s commentary. Unfortunately, the gameplay doesn’t quite tie as well together with the theme.
The player gets to control one of three characters throughout the game, each of which controls identically apart from one special ability. Melee and ranged combat are both used equally to dispatch the variety of monsters the game throws at players. While there are plenty of different weapons to acquire and level, the differences in how they act is miniscule. I found myself using whichever weapon was newest; just pushing the attack button with no combo system and rarely doing charged attacks. Occasionally the game will send enemies up from the bottom of the tower and players must approach the ledge and enter a specific mode to shoot down. Because the game only features fixed and automatic camera controls these encounters can sometimes be difficult to engage. Luckily the auto-aim is extremely generous, negating most of the frustration the lack of control would cause.
In The Deadly Tower of Monsters the goal is simple: get to the top of the tower which is, as expected, full of monsters waiting to be killed. The name gets most things right, but is wrong when it says it’s deadly. Apart from a few areas that I had to repeat several times (and subsequently hear identical commentary for each repeat attempt) most of the game is a cakewalk, and has zero difficulty adjustment options. My first playthrough took just over three hours, and that included a bit of exploration. In an effort to give players incentive to explore there are missions which upon completion gives the option to level up a stat; melee or ranged damage, gun ammo recharge rate, and heath are just some examples of what can be upgraded. While these upgrades are a nice gesture, they lack any real purpose as it is already easy enough without them. It did still incentivize me, if for nothing else than to be in the world for longer to see and hear all of the style offered. My favorite of the missions involved jumping off the side of the tower, free-falling through rings; like something out of Pilotwings. Because the player doesn’t have direct control of the camera, lining up the initial jump off the tower can be challenging and frustrating. Fortunately, the characters possess an ability to transport instantly back to where they were last standing. If for some reason you do fall down and somehow manage to survive, every checkpoint in the game also acts as a fast travel point that players can warp to almost instantly. Giving players a reason to jump off of an incredibly tall structure is an awesome way to showcase the clever vertical level design. I encountered some performance issues on PS4 when jumping from some of the highest sections of the tower, with textures popping in and a reduced framerate.
The Final Word
The Deadly Tower of Monsters is a shining example of how campy themes can be done intentionally and still be humorous. While the combat can be a bit dull, and the lack of camera control makes some of the movement unnecessarily difficult, they all work in service of the well crafted story. If you are looking for a mechanically diverse gameplay experience look elsewhere, but if you like B-movies The Deadly Tower of Monsters might be the best example of a cheesy science-fiction game.
– MonsterVine Rating: 4 out of 5 – Good
