The stagnation brought about by trends is an illness you can only truly see when you manage to get your hands on something unique and fresh, a moment that I gladly experienced when I first played Devil Daggers all the way back in 2016. The simplicity of its unachievable taunting goal and its hellish display of lovecraftian inevitability did more to revitalize a genre in less than 30 seconds than what a decade+ of modern console First Person Shooters failed to do.
Sorath's audacious nonchalant drop of its spiritual sequel Hyper Demon is somehow even better than Devil Daggers. Watching the stroboscopic migraine inducing trailer, it doesn't really manage to convey the sense of presence and awareness Hyper Demon puts you in until you are the one actually holding the mouse and keyboard inside its hellish prism of anxiety.
While at first glance not doing much to differenciate itself from its predecessor, the brilliance of Hyper Demon only reveals itself when you start fighting against the real innovation and evolution of this project: the score. Constantly ticking down beyond the zero digit, the challenge of Hyper Demon revolves around outrunning an indifferent ever reversed clock that assaults you with endless pursuing, screen filling and noise making nightmare projections inside a kaleidoscopic void.
Getting a high score in Devil Daggers was a curse disguised as a blessing that further extended downtime and proportionally decreased your engagement with it, a design flaw that the dev team picked up on and cleverly exploited in Hyper Demon to constantly force you into the frying pan of death, and the added versatility of its new combo stringing mechanics, power ups and enemies instill a level of verticality and speed that far outmatches its now tamer older sibling.
The arcade-y nature of Hyper Demon is a trait that inevitably puts it into a niche that will understandably discourage some players off who require more tangible and extrinsic rewards than a high score like narrative and progression, but you will be hard pressed to find this year another experience that in the span of a couple of seconds consumes your senses with a level of clarity that has you ignoring every survival instinct and throwing yourself into death, grasping at an always escaping victory while skulls from hell spell your misfortune through ghastly red premonitions.
What stays is the terrifying image of me sitting alone in front of a computer screen in the corner of a dark room at 1 am, in a daze of lunacy and caffeine while I witness my name toppling hundreds of poor souls while ascending a ladder that further demands more of my sanity. This is my GOTY, and I don't see it being topped.
Sorath's audacious nonchalant drop of its spiritual sequel Hyper Demon is somehow even better than Devil Daggers. Watching the stroboscopic migraine inducing trailer, it doesn't really manage to convey the sense of presence and awareness Hyper Demon puts you in until you are the one actually holding the mouse and keyboard inside its hellish prism of anxiety.
While at first glance not doing much to differenciate itself from its predecessor, the brilliance of Hyper Demon only reveals itself when you start fighting against the real innovation and evolution of this project: the score. Constantly ticking down beyond the zero digit, the challenge of Hyper Demon revolves around outrunning an indifferent ever reversed clock that assaults you with endless pursuing, screen filling and noise making nightmare projections inside a kaleidoscopic void.
Getting a high score in Devil Daggers was a curse disguised as a blessing that further extended downtime and proportionally decreased your engagement with it, a design flaw that the dev team picked up on and cleverly exploited in Hyper Demon to constantly force you into the frying pan of death, and the added versatility of its new combo stringing mechanics, power ups and enemies instill a level of verticality and speed that far outmatches its now tamer older sibling.
The arcade-y nature of Hyper Demon is a trait that inevitably puts it into a niche that will understandably discourage some players off who require more tangible and extrinsic rewards than a high score like narrative and progression, but you will be hard pressed to find this year another experience that in the span of a couple of seconds consumes your senses with a level of clarity that has you ignoring every survival instinct and throwing yourself into death, grasping at an always escaping victory while skulls from hell spell your misfortune through ghastly red premonitions.
What stays is the terrifying image of me sitting alone in front of a computer screen in the corner of a dark room at 1 am, in a daze of lunacy and caffeine while I witness my name toppling hundreds of poor souls while ascending a ladder that further demands more of my sanity. This is my GOTY, and I don't see it being topped.
2 Comments
thank you, hope you enjoy it
SunlitSonata
1 year ago
Effective review once again.