Travis Strikes Again is as much a story of Travis Touchdown's adventures outside in isolation from the UAA ranking assassin fights, as it is a story of the main director and head of Grasshopper Manufacture: Suda51
The game shows Travis Touchdown, by far Suda's most popular character, as well as most relatable for us as an audience and him as a creator going through various stages of Suda's development as a game designer, from the starts of him being inspired from kitschy arcade games, to his stage where he developed visual novel stories such as Silver Case being reflected in Coffee and Donuts all the way to Suda's history of development with Shadows of the Damned.
Theme wise it also explores the greater world of Suda led game projects like Silver Case, Moonlight Syndrome, Killer7, hell even Fire Pro Wrestling is mentioned and looked at from Travis' lens.
Gameplay is on the surface simplistic to the max where you can only do one type of light attack and a 3 hit heavy combo attack, but the true gameplay interactions come from the Death Drive abilities which Travis has equipped, you can force push people, shoot out projectiles to stun, then the weird ones that let him shoot out a canister of flammable gas that he can light on fire, mixing and matching those Death Drive chips are incredible fun seeing the best ways to clear the multitudes of enemies the game throws at you!
Dialogue wise this is Suda at possibly his finest, years to reflect on his limited involvement in the actual knitty-gritty of game making, deconstructions of themes and characters from his own games and contemporary games through the times he has been active.
Less Travis Strikes Back, more like Suda Strikes Back! Bewildering, engaging, and confounding and deeply personal as ever!
The game shows Travis Touchdown, by far Suda's most popular character, as well as most relatable for us as an audience and him as a creator going through various stages of Suda's development as a game designer, from the starts of him being inspired from kitschy arcade games, to his stage where he developed visual novel stories such as Silver Case being reflected in Coffee and Donuts all the way to Suda's history of development with Shadows of the Damned.
Theme wise it also explores the greater world of Suda led game projects like Silver Case, Moonlight Syndrome, Killer7, hell even Fire Pro Wrestling is mentioned and looked at from Travis' lens.
Gameplay is on the surface simplistic to the max where you can only do one type of light attack and a 3 hit heavy combo attack, but the true gameplay interactions come from the Death Drive abilities which Travis has equipped, you can force push people, shoot out projectiles to stun, then the weird ones that let him shoot out a canister of flammable gas that he can light on fire, mixing and matching those Death Drive chips are incredible fun seeing the best ways to clear the multitudes of enemies the game throws at you!
Dialogue wise this is Suda at possibly his finest, years to reflect on his limited involvement in the actual knitty-gritty of game making, deconstructions of themes and characters from his own games and contemporary games through the times he has been active.
Less Travis Strikes Back, more like Suda Strikes Back! Bewildering, engaging, and confounding and deeply personal as ever!