This game is an action game that combines elements of the classic retro shooter and low poly styling. The player's task is to destroy all enemies that come across on the way.
Reviews View More
Originally posted here: https://cultclassiccornervideogames.wordpress.com/2023/07/14/polyclassic-wild-2021-pc-review/
There is nothing worse than the ‘asset flip’ when it comes to games. For those not in the know, an ‘asset flip’ game is a game that uses nothing but pre-made assets instead entirely or mostly original content for a game. And while there’s nothing wrong with using pre-made assets for a game, even one mostly or entirely made up of pre-made assets. But just like most games, an ‘asset flip’ is still going to require effort put into it for the final product to end up good. But because of just how easy it is to buy pre-made assets and put them together in your game engine of choice, there are going to be a ton of games that end up slapped together and released in less than a week.
And one of those ‘asset flips’ is “PolyClassic: Wild”.
There is no plot to “PolyClassic: Wild”, no characters, not even much variety when it comes to gameplay, including weapons, map, or one map in this case, or enemies. Which shouldn’t be an issue since there a plethora of games that manage to use a singular location with little variety in it’s gameplay and presentation that you could forgive or even forget just how low budget that game is. But now with this game.
When it comes to gameplay, it’s entirely running around enemies with the most basic AI. Every “””mission””” is just trying to kill every enemy or a certain amount of enemies to complete the level. Guns include the standard handgun, both single barrel and double barrel shotguns, minigun, a rocket launcher that looks like the one from “Quake III”, fists and a sledgehammer as your melee weapons, and a laser gun that looks like the Plasma Gun from the original “Doom” games. It’s a arsenal of weapons as bland as it is unsatisfying to shoot. The enemies range from the enemies that swarm you to punch you, riflemen that shoot you, and two bosses that’s twice as big as the regular enemies. One that fires green balls of energy at you and the other that has rocket launcher. And there are the Health and armor pickups that do exactly what you think they do.
The whole game is just running around and shooting enemies with the most basic AI in a singular small town set in the wild west that is broken up into 6 “Missions” that require you to kill a certain amount of enemies before you can continue onto the next mission. Each of which is exactly the same. “Kill [X] amount of enemies to complete the mission”.
If those last two blocks of text sounds unappealing to read I can assure that it’s even more unappealing to play. The original “Doom” in 1993 had more variety in it’s weapons, enemies, and any one of the maps in it’s campaign, and that came out 28 years before “PolyClassic: Wild”. And you would think that being bored to death would be the worst of it, but it’s somehow worse than that.
There is no indication of if you’re being hit by enemies or where they’re hitting you from, and considering that enemies can do a lot of damage very quickly, you can end up having to do a mission several times over. Which is extra insulting since there is no difficulty option, so you just have to deal with the enemies that can easily kill you from half-way across the already small map while having to run away from the enemies that are swarming at you.
To tell you the truth, I told a small lie earlier when it came to the game’s variety. There is some variety in the form of optional secondary objectives. These range from “Complete a level with over 60HP remaining”, “Kill the Mini-Boss”, or “Only use the sledgehammer”. One secondary objective is to kill a bunch of enemies with a sledgehammer, which has awful range and constantly lead to me getting killed due to enemies being able to hit me more consistently than I was able to hit them, both melee and ranged.
With the games borderline unfair difficulty, mostly as a result of just how little effort there was in balancing the enemies and weapons, there is no real incentive to complete this objectives, and you don’t need to complete them to move onto the next level anyway. The Steam version doesn’t even give you achievements for these secondary objectives, only for completing the levels, so even achievement hunters don’t need to go through with them.
The movement also feels awful and stiff, which shows just how lazy the developers were when it came to just how little they changed from the default settings that the engine came with.
Graphically the game is not the worst looking thing I’ve played, but that is me being exceptionally kind with my backhanded compliment. There is only one level spread across the games six short missions, and that’s a small town in desert set during the wild west. The game even has the gall to call a level “Wild West” as if the entire game isn’t just the one map reused over and over and over again. The same applies to enemy models, which isn’t a problem with lower level enemies that frequently appear, but I’m pretty sure the developers could have changed something about them. Maybe given them a new hat and shirt maybe. There’s already so little to go on in this game that even the smallest amount of effort would have done something.
And to top it all off, the game froze multiple times when changing settings, requiring me to force close the game. It’s one thing to be an asset flip, it’s another to not even make your asset flip so lazily put together that it crashes the game.
The game is less than half an hour long if you power through it, and maybe an hour long if you’re masochistic enough to try and complete the secondary objectives. And it was one of the most mind-numbing hours of my life. At least it comes in a dozen or so languages, but I’m pretty sure those are the generic “New Game”, “Options”, and “Credits” translated to those dozen languages that every game engine comes with.
But the most insulting thing about this whole game is that the developers behind it are charging $12USD for the game. That’s right, 12 dollars. Or a single dollar when it’s on a 99% sale, which is still too much for this game. And what makes this the most insulting part, other the price gouging, is that it appears to be made by the same company that developed and published a game called “We Are The Dwarves”, which looks to be a game that the developers actually put time and effort into.
If someone told me that a child made this as their first game and were selling it for 50 cents, I would have given it some leeway. Hell, I might even buy to support the kid, but I’m definitely sure that’s not the situation.
There is nothing worse than the ‘asset flip’ when it comes to games. For those not in the know, an ‘asset flip’ game is a game that uses nothing but pre-made assets instead entirely or mostly original content for a game. And while there’s nothing wrong with using pre-made assets for a game, even one mostly or entirely made up of pre-made assets. But just like most games, an ‘asset flip’ is still going to require effort put into it for the final product to end up good. But because of just how easy it is to buy pre-made assets and put them together in your game engine of choice, there are going to be a ton of games that end up slapped together and released in less than a week.
And one of those ‘asset flips’ is “PolyClassic: Wild”.
There is no plot to “PolyClassic: Wild”, no characters, not even much variety when it comes to gameplay, including weapons, map, or one map in this case, or enemies. Which shouldn’t be an issue since there a plethora of games that manage to use a singular location with little variety in it’s gameplay and presentation that you could forgive or even forget just how low budget that game is. But now with this game.
When it comes to gameplay, it’s entirely running around enemies with the most basic AI. Every “””mission””” is just trying to kill every enemy or a certain amount of enemies to complete the level. Guns include the standard handgun, both single barrel and double barrel shotguns, minigun, a rocket launcher that looks like the one from “Quake III”, fists and a sledgehammer as your melee weapons, and a laser gun that looks like the Plasma Gun from the original “Doom” games. It’s a arsenal of weapons as bland as it is unsatisfying to shoot. The enemies range from the enemies that swarm you to punch you, riflemen that shoot you, and two bosses that’s twice as big as the regular enemies. One that fires green balls of energy at you and the other that has rocket launcher. And there are the Health and armor pickups that do exactly what you think they do.
The whole game is just running around and shooting enemies with the most basic AI in a singular small town set in the wild west that is broken up into 6 “Missions” that require you to kill a certain amount of enemies before you can continue onto the next mission. Each of which is exactly the same. “Kill [X] amount of enemies to complete the mission”.
If those last two blocks of text sounds unappealing to read I can assure that it’s even more unappealing to play. The original “Doom” in 1993 had more variety in it’s weapons, enemies, and any one of the maps in it’s campaign, and that came out 28 years before “PolyClassic: Wild”. And you would think that being bored to death would be the worst of it, but it’s somehow worse than that.
There is no indication of if you’re being hit by enemies or where they’re hitting you from, and considering that enemies can do a lot of damage very quickly, you can end up having to do a mission several times over. Which is extra insulting since there is no difficulty option, so you just have to deal with the enemies that can easily kill you from half-way across the already small map while having to run away from the enemies that are swarming at you.
To tell you the truth, I told a small lie earlier when it came to the game’s variety. There is some variety in the form of optional secondary objectives. These range from “Complete a level with over 60HP remaining”, “Kill the Mini-Boss”, or “Only use the sledgehammer”. One secondary objective is to kill a bunch of enemies with a sledgehammer, which has awful range and constantly lead to me getting killed due to enemies being able to hit me more consistently than I was able to hit them, both melee and ranged.
With the games borderline unfair difficulty, mostly as a result of just how little effort there was in balancing the enemies and weapons, there is no real incentive to complete this objectives, and you don’t need to complete them to move onto the next level anyway. The Steam version doesn’t even give you achievements for these secondary objectives, only for completing the levels, so even achievement hunters don’t need to go through with them.
The movement also feels awful and stiff, which shows just how lazy the developers were when it came to just how little they changed from the default settings that the engine came with.
Graphically the game is not the worst looking thing I’ve played, but that is me being exceptionally kind with my backhanded compliment. There is only one level spread across the games six short missions, and that’s a small town in desert set during the wild west. The game even has the gall to call a level “Wild West” as if the entire game isn’t just the one map reused over and over and over again. The same applies to enemy models, which isn’t a problem with lower level enemies that frequently appear, but I’m pretty sure the developers could have changed something about them. Maybe given them a new hat and shirt maybe. There’s already so little to go on in this game that even the smallest amount of effort would have done something.
And to top it all off, the game froze multiple times when changing settings, requiring me to force close the game. It’s one thing to be an asset flip, it’s another to not even make your asset flip so lazily put together that it crashes the game.
The game is less than half an hour long if you power through it, and maybe an hour long if you’re masochistic enough to try and complete the secondary objectives. And it was one of the most mind-numbing hours of my life. At least it comes in a dozen or so languages, but I’m pretty sure those are the generic “New Game”, “Options”, and “Credits” translated to those dozen languages that every game engine comes with.
But the most insulting thing about this whole game is that the developers behind it are charging $12USD for the game. That’s right, 12 dollars. Or a single dollar when it’s on a 99% sale, which is still too much for this game. And what makes this the most insulting part, other the price gouging, is that it appears to be made by the same company that developed and published a game called “We Are The Dwarves”, which looks to be a game that the developers actually put time and effort into.
If someone told me that a child made this as their first game and were selling it for 50 cents, I would have given it some leeway. Hell, I might even buy to support the kid, but I’m definitely sure that’s not the situation.