This was a pretty good game for the Halloween season.
The thumb stick-based combat wasn't as bad as, say, Too Human, but I'm glad that game developers left the thumbsticks alone when it came to combat after a certain point. It was kind of annoying in this game, it was annoying in Too Human, and it was annoying in Metal Gear Rising with its left stick parrying mechanics.
The combat is overall very simplistic and is mostly in service to the puzzle based gameplay. Most of the time the puzzles involve strategically selecting weapons and power-ups to work around the challenges presented, such as not killing a certain type of enemy of killing every enemy within the time limit. These start off simple before getting brutally difficult in chapter 3.
You can tell this game had a fairly troubled development because the design is extremely linear and room to room rather than the more open pseudo-metroidvania of something like Resident Evil. It feels like it settled on the former because it didn't have the development time to create the latter, and that's fine by me. This game is great because it's short and sweet, a longer and more open experience would make it more of a slog.
The atmosphere is very cartoonish and aged well. The soundtrack is your standard goofy, spooky style of music with some absolute bangers like the main theme and the ballroom theme. The game is very funny as well. Even though this is an E rated game, it's filled with dirty jokes that would fly over a kid's head. The name of the game itself is a double entendre, and there are scenes like Cooper giving Amber the ointment to cure her disfigurement (if you played this part you know what I'm talking about). It's not all dirty though, there's plenty of slapstick, wordplay, and absurdity.
The reason I docked points from this game was that it was brutally difficult in chapter 3 and chapter 4, though chapter 4 was basically just the final boss. It was extremely frustrating, but luckily the difficulty drastically decreased in chapter 5 after beating the final boss, who was the last big hurdle to jump through before your victory lap, saving all the captives.
Overall, this is a pretty good game to play during spooky season. Would recommend, but only if you're up for an extremely difficult challenge towards the end.
The thumb stick-based combat wasn't as bad as, say, Too Human, but I'm glad that game developers left the thumbsticks alone when it came to combat after a certain point. It was kind of annoying in this game, it was annoying in Too Human, and it was annoying in Metal Gear Rising with its left stick parrying mechanics.
The combat is overall very simplistic and is mostly in service to the puzzle based gameplay. Most of the time the puzzles involve strategically selecting weapons and power-ups to work around the challenges presented, such as not killing a certain type of enemy of killing every enemy within the time limit. These start off simple before getting brutally difficult in chapter 3.
You can tell this game had a fairly troubled development because the design is extremely linear and room to room rather than the more open pseudo-metroidvania of something like Resident Evil. It feels like it settled on the former because it didn't have the development time to create the latter, and that's fine by me. This game is great because it's short and sweet, a longer and more open experience would make it more of a slog.
The atmosphere is very cartoonish and aged well. The soundtrack is your standard goofy, spooky style of music with some absolute bangers like the main theme and the ballroom theme. The game is very funny as well. Even though this is an E rated game, it's filled with dirty jokes that would fly over a kid's head. The name of the game itself is a double entendre, and there are scenes like Cooper giving Amber the ointment to cure her disfigurement (if you played this part you know what I'm talking about). It's not all dirty though, there's plenty of slapstick, wordplay, and absurdity.
The reason I docked points from this game was that it was brutally difficult in chapter 3 and chapter 4, though chapter 4 was basically just the final boss. It was extremely frustrating, but luckily the difficulty drastically decreased in chapter 5 after beating the final boss, who was the last big hurdle to jump through before your victory lap, saving all the captives.
Overall, this is a pretty good game to play during spooky season. Would recommend, but only if you're up for an extremely difficult challenge towards the end.