In the end, The Deadly Tower of Monsters was not very good. A funny game still needs to be fun to play and this game wasn’t. It felt like a bunch of guys got together with a good joke and tried to fit a video game under it without any real game design experience. There really was potential in the storytelling, but it fell flat when the journey between joke A and Joke B was peppered with thoughts of shutting the game off out of boredom.
It just shows that game design is important regardless of context. Games like Gone Home have very simple gameplay, but it fits the narrative of a simple story. A crazy, cheesy over-the-top space adventure needs to have crazy, cheesy over-the-top gameplay. Instead it assumed the best part of the game would carry it through the rough parts which it unfortunately did not.
The Positives
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The Deadly Tower of Monsters is funny. The idea of a director coming back to do commentary on a terrible movie is original and full of jokes. For example, he jokes about a weapon the player gets being made of household electric razor and people couldn’t tell the difference anyway. You spend the rest of the game knowing that your laser spread-gun is a Braun razor.
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There are multiple characters to play as, including the dashing hero, the space princess, and the robot sidekick. They each have different skills that can be used to solve puzzles throughout the game. This adds some variety to the action and different conversations with the director.
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The premise is a weird breath of fresh air. Nobody was begging for a commentary on B-list sci-fi movies, but we got it and it was entertaining. Seeing poorly constructed props and the wires hanging from paper mache bats as they’re hung from the ceiling in game is pretty funny. Atlus took a risk and published an original idea. 70s sci-fis weren’t great, but making fun of them is.
The Negatives
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The gameplay is pretty bland. Fighting consists of left clicking for melee, right clicking for ranged, and buttons to toggle different weapons for each. The array of weapons don’t differ much at all, offering very little in the way of strategic loadout.
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Upgrades are boring. Weapon upgrades at least offered a physical change in the weapons, but character upgrades just add boring stats to an otherwise colorful world. With a game that isn’t particularly hard or complex, an upgrade system almost seems unnecessary.
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Even though the schtick of The Deadly Tower of Monsters is terribleness, the graphics are pretty lackluster even by the standard set by the game. Yes, the plastic trees the director pointed out were actually plastic-looking. The dinosaurs were stop motion and the monkeys purposely looked like men in monkey suites. However, they all look like this satire was made on the Playstation 2.
The Deadly Tower of Monsters is an isometric adventure game that pokes fun at B-list sci-fi movies from the days of yore. Published by Atlus, the game poses itself as the DVD release of an old movie with a new commentary track. The player assumes control of the leading actors while the director comments on the adventure.
The game plays very similar to top down action games like Diablo or Bastion and while there’s no loot table, different weapons are picked up throughout the linear style gameplay. This B-list sci-fi movie re-release story comes complete with (intentionally) hammy actors, wires holding up flying enemies, and even stop motion dinosaurs. The game runs at a standard frame rate and the dinosaurs actually look like jerky framed claymation. All the while, the director informs the player of what’s going on, often interrupting the (again, intentionally) terrible plot to speed past the reminders of how bad those movies were sometimes.
The comedy aspects of the game are actually pretty great. They were legitimately enjoyable, but the action seemed to bring nothing new to the table. I found myself trekking through the somewhat lackluster gameplay to the next joke in order to keep myself entertained, which is a real shame for the level of humor employed. A silly game that doesn’t take itself too serious with upgrades like “adds 5% damage done with melee/ranged/etc” type upgrades for every level doesn’t seem to mix very well.
