I am Weapon: Revival Review

Krealit, (the developer of this game) is responsible for another game- Guns n Zombies, which; was received relatively well by critics and Steam users alike. I am Weapon is only on PC and can be purchased on Steam. If you want to know whether to follow this link and relieve your wallet, then keep reading.

Introduction

You may find yourself excited to play I am Weapon when you first boot it up: despite its long loading time, you are presented with a pretty nice menu layout and detailed character models in the background. I know that the character, specifically enemy design, got me looking forward to playing it. But as soon as you jump into the game, you'll know something's up. Let me just say right now – this game is plain bad: Whilst almost every game has redeeming qualities, and this is no exception, it's buggy nature and all manner of other problems reflect straight away that, you're in for one of Steam's finest.

Of course, there is more to it than the game simply being bad. We'll get into the ins and outs of that shortly. One thing I have to bring up is that I did enjoy the game to some extent, it's not wholly un-enjoyable, and if you like laughing at bad Steam games; here it is. The mix of a horror style with an isometric shooter is quite enthralling. It's definitely not going to bore you, not to mention the wacky character models and grotesque designs of some NPC's. Regardless, just attempting to blend two genres does not always pay off, it can also just be a bad game. With this, it's a case of both. Let's look at why.

The Narrative

There isn't a massive amount to say in this section, but it needs to be included. I'll give you an overview of what the plot is about, and don't worry I won't spoil it (not that it matters) So the game begins with our friendly neighbourhood blue-arm guy performing a classic exposition dump: he talks about how when he was a kid, his parents were gunned down in a bank robbery, and he never found the man who killed them. Dun Dun Dunnnnnn! Sounds familiar, right? The dialogue is very wooden and direct, the character has no personality to him at all pretty much. Anyway, as you can already tell, his motivation is to find the man who killed his parents, big shocker. From here on out the game is set within Batman's dream, sorry not Batman, Blue-arm guy. Each level contains a memory you will unlock at the end of it: I found this to be a pretty cool feature as you are slowly drip-fed the story, so the game is not oversaturated by the plot.

Apparently, the main character has become a sort of vigilante for some reason and knows how to handle every gun in existence with no effort. Not that I always think logic like this is needed in games, but in all honesty, nothing in the game makes sense, whether it be to do with the plot, or how the characters react to certain situations. For example; you have this weird fairy thing with you that you save in the first level, and she will pretty much always second-guess your decision. However, at random times she will completely agree with a decision that she previously was in absolute objection to, it's really obnoxious; because it patronises the player, assuming they won't notice such a rookie mistake in character design.

The story is also filled with some pretty unique characters, unfortunately, none of them ever really get expanded upon. This is a shame because the game genuinely has good character design, they are all rather twisted and, despite feeling out of place at times; they fit well with the games style. The story is boring and you won't find it doing anything that no other game has done before. Personally, I think the game would certainly be better off without the narrative being such a big part: It feels forced and it's not compelling, nor does it really add to the experience at all.

Gameplay Mechanics

Basic Mechanics and Combat

So, before I go over the goods and bads let me explain how this game works. As it is a Twin-sticks/Isometric shooter this game involves a top down view and aiming with either the mouse or stick, depending on what you prefer. I played with Mouse and Keyboard, but I can easily see why you would go for a controller. This is to allow for the slaughtering of enemy hordes quickly and effectively, which you will be doing A LOT of in this clown-fest. As soon as you enter the game you'll most likely be confused, hell I know I was and it's not like I don't partake in the video games often! The game just sort of pops in, with no warning at all there you are. The second you push that sweet W key your eyes will begin to hurt, the diabolical drop in frames will surely take your nubile body by surprise as you try not to instantly turn the game off. If you can't tell already, yeah; the framerate is bad, and that's before endlessly spawning horrors start to mindlessly charge at you. Look, I'm using my laptop for this so I'm only running on an Intel Core. But I know it can definitely run this game because I run games with a much higher quality and they work fine, here the framerate dips randomly and whilst at times it can be stable, even at the lowest settings, the game just hordes you with more clowns than it can handle: this is because no matter where you are on the map, you will constantly be attacked by eternally spawning crowds, which really does affect the game's quality. This is something that should have been considered by Krealit when the game was in development and surely must have been pointed out by early access players.

Here's the biggest problem with the gameplay – attacks, whether they be your attacks or enemy's, have literally no impact. AT ALL. This is a massive issue, and probably the worst thing about the game. Normally we may see the screen flash red, or shake at lease when getting hit. Hell, even a sound cue would be fine! Despite this, all that will happen when you get hit is that your health bar will go down, so you can just die and not even know you lost any health at all. The same goes for hitting enemies, all you'll see is slight blood splatter which isn't noticeable within large groups of them. This is really important as it takes away any satisfaction from gunning down countless monstrosities, and is devoid of enjoyability, rendering the games core gameplay element, well. Terrible.

The game has a variety of weapon types, for example, the machine gun, the flamethrower, and the rocket launcher. Only two of these weapon types are needed to play the game, the machine gun, and the rocket launcher. Oh, also you get a melee weapon which is extremely overpowered, even if you don't upgrade that bad boy. The combat doesn't have much depth to it at all, in earlier levels you can just stand there and spam the melee attack, in turn causing most bad guys to die before they can even hit you. Later on, and if you are arbitrarily running around the map on some stupid fetch-quest, (I'll get to that soon) you can just fire into the herd with your machine gun, which, like the melee weapon; is a genocide tool even from the start of the experience. This brings me on to my next point, that being the currency and more importantly, it's obtainment. This system is as broken as Sonic 06, due to the fact that our red-nosed friends spawn indefinitely, you can just stand there and get massive amounts of money, or sorry 'souls' to upgrade your equipment to full right near the start. The game claims to have RPG elements but this is just a farce, that being because all you do is click to upgrade your weapons, increasing their damage. I'm sorry but if you want to sell yourself as an RPG, you're going to need more than that you cheeky monkey.

Sidequests and Collectibles

This game has two types of level, open levels and what I would call, 'wave levels'. The former being an open level with a map and various collectibles spread throughout it: The latter here is when you fight either a boss or survive against waves of killer clowns in order to retrieve your memory. Each level will contain crystals which unlock new weapons to buy and elixirs you use to upgrade abilities. You get crystals in bigger levels by completing side-quests dotted about the area, for strange NPCs. These side-quests are not very fun at all, they are either a mini-game which goes on for way too long or a retrieval of items for the character, after which they will reward you. The only problem with these is that they are not really side-quests because you pretty much have to do them in order to even remotely enjoy the game. Why? you ask because there is a massive difficulty spike about halfway into this wreck; which leads to you basically needing the higher tier weapons, which can only be obtained by completing these so-called 'optional' missions. They wouldn't be so bad if there wasn't always a massive horde of freaks on your tail 24/7, which isn't an exaggeration trust me. It really is a shame because some of the dialogue can be funny at times, adding a little light in this dark tunnel, but alas they simply serve to keep the player busy and artificially extend game time.

Presentation

Visual Design

As I briefly glossed over before, I really like some of the character designs in this game. More specifically, the basic enemies all look pretty decent, they are what capture the games horror theme, along with the odd environments and characters. A man with a top hat who can take off is head and shoot lasers out of it, and a woman clown who teleports are two of my favorites. One gripe I do have is that most quest-giving characters look very similar, just with a different hat or jacket. However, this is possibly a moot point as it may be intentional. In terms of graphical fidelity, this game looks like it's from the early PS2 era. A lot of the time graphics are just something that should not be focused on as much, they don't really affect the game massively, it's more about attention to detail: But when they look this bad it really does hurt the game's integrity. Coupled with the screen tearing and stretched out textures on almost every object this game really does look bad, and I found its lack of large colour palette and barren maps to be very boring to explore.

The blood splatter, and weapon effects all look pretty trashy and occur in an inconsistent way, meaning it's hard to tell whether your gun is actually firing. The way the face-painted grunts die is also pretty undignified, they just fall to the ground like slabs of meat on a butcher's table. Just a little attention to detail throughout, with lackluster animations and a game devoid of any interesting environmental cues. The HUD is boring too, with your bog standard health bar and generic gun design in the top corner. There's not much to say about it, really.

Sound Design

Do you want to hear the same two tracks over and over again for a whole gaming experience!? Gun sounds that cut out every couple of shots!? If so, then stop reading this review and buy this game NOW! Of course, I kid, the sound design is awful. Let's begin with the music. When you start the game you will be introduced to Blue-arm guys nightmare realm with a chilling tune, that tune being a mixture of fun house music and creepy shrill tones. It's pretty good and it fits. Suddenly, Heavy Metal starts playing randomly, but why? It isn't the battle music, you just had two battles and it didn't play then, so why now? Here's the deal, when the creepy track ends Heavy Metal just starts playing, as it is not precisely placed it is very jarring and even somebody like me who isn't an expert on music knows it is used extremely badly. Honestly, I would prefer it was just one track, at least then it would be consistent. The soundtrack if you can call it that is lazily constructed, and definitely doesn't fit with the atmosphere of the gameplay itself.

The sound effects are very bare bones, with gunfire being inconsistent and cutting out, and the waves of baddies only grunting on occasion. I do like the sound of bullets hitting off of walls in the game, but the sounds infrequency makes it very hard to enjoy; in turn just adding on to the pile of things in this game that are disappointing.

My Final thoughts and Opinions

Look, I've been really harsh with this game I realise that: that's purely because this game is terrible regardless of whether you enjoyed it or not. I personally found that occasionally the boss battles were fun. Whilst I derived my own enjoyment out of this I did it because I had to in order to stay sane. The game fails to feel impactful and is the worst thing a game can be, boring. Isometric shooters can be hard to make interesting, this is even more prevalent in my case as I rarely enjoy them myself. In this review, I tried not to let my opinion get in the way too much because the game needs to be seen for what it is: a hot mess. Another thing I'd like to mention is that Krealit clearly recycled other features from their previous game Guns n Zombies, this is very lazy; and whilst I am Weapon: Revival had thought put into it. It failed.