Garage: Bad Trip

released on May 10, 2018

Garage is a bloody topdown shooter inspired by VHS era B-movies. You play as an ex drug dealer named Butch, who single-handedly slays hordes of living dead to save a girl.


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Continuing the TinyBuild bundle marathon I've been on the past couple days, I played through this today. It bills itself as a survival horror "twin-stick shooter," so naturally I broke out my usual 360 gamepad to play it with, but OH was that a mistake and a half. I'd never heard of any other survival horror twin-stick shooters, and it turns out there's a good reason for that.

In GARAGE, you play as guy with amnesia working his way through a parking garage as some kind of zombie apocalypse occurs. You have melee punches and kicks to start, and then you find stuff like an ax, a shotgun, a pistol, etc. to kill baddies with. The narrative gets pretty wild from there at its own weird pace, but at the end I was surprised at just how very grounded and thoroughly explained it all was. The game really doesn't sell itself on its narrative, and I didn't really care about it too much because the rest of the game was so frustrating mechanically, but it's actually a pretty good story that I could really never guess the next turn in.

The game sells itself a lot on its presentation and style, and not undeservedly so. The visuals are technically 3D, but it doesn't seem like that most of the time because of a scan-line set that are ever-present on the screen, as the game is going for a kind of VHS B-Movie Horror aesthetic in all kinds of ways. The colors will spasm, the screen telescopes (kinda like Hotline Miami but you don't really have control over it), and the blood and gore are EVERYWHERE as you fight increasingly crazy monsters. The only real complaint I have with the visuals is that they're sometimes a bit TOO crazy, and they can make what you can and can't walk on confusing as well as make hitboxes unclear.

Interesting presentation and premise aside, the game really starts to tank in the mechanics department, as the game's largest problems come from its survival horror meets twin-stick shooter design. Functionally it's adequate enough to complete the game, but I'd be skeptical on how long you could keep your sanity if you played through with a gamepad the whole way through. The only reason I was able to stick with it is because I switched to mouse & keyboard a couple hours in. And before I continue on, I will mention that the controls are bugged for gamepad for the Steam version of this (I believe it's also at least available on Xbox One), as you can't actually steer vehicles with the gamepad. The animation for turning happens, but you don't turn. You need to use WASD to turn the motorcycle in the earlier chapters and it's crazy awkward (but at least it's a short section).

When I think "twin-stick shooter," I think crazy arcadey action like Smash TV or Forgotten Worlds. Using one stick to keep yourself alive and the other to fire wildly at the oncoming onslaught. When I think "survival horror," I think careful, methodical playing to conserve the limited rations you have, because every enemy is dangerous and your resources for dealing with them are very limited. Why anyone though mixing these two genres would be a great idea, I have no clue, but GARAGE fails to execute this fusion well.

The simple fact is that this game plays like garbage on a gamepad (with twin-sticks) because it is unreasonably difficult to aim accurately with the right joystick compared to aiming with your mouse. Conserving ammo is basically impossible because stuff is so hard to hit in the first place, and the game is hard enough and your ammo caps are low enough that you really can't afford to mess up too many shots. You melee attacks are absolutely garbage, and this also brings me onto another important point that exemplifies all of the trouble with the lack of thought that went into crafting the mechanics of this "twin-stick shooter": Rats.

Rats are the very first enemy you meet in the game, and they'll be jumping you to try and attack you the whole way through it up to the very final boss fight. They go towards you slowly, then CHARGE at you, almost faster than you can move, and they also do tons of damage, so they can't just be ignored or gone past. Your choices to deal with rats are two: You can either use a precious bullet of the few you have to shoot the rat and hope you hit that tiny target, or you can kick it. Kicking is a special melee attack that you can do no matter what weapon you're holding. You can't kick while moving, it has a very short range, and the range isn't even the width of your already thin character. If the enemy isn't within about the middle third of the front of you (and nearly on top of you already), you aren't gonna land that kick. Add on top of that that rats take not one but TWO kick to kill, and you have an insanely infuriating enemy that is present throughout the whole game, whose main design flaw would've been dealt with had rats been melee-able just like any other enemy in the game.

And the list of problems with the genre mash-up absolutely doesn't stop there.
- You have a dodge roll, but you already normal-walk faster than most any can run and the walls are lined with deadly fire and pits that can kill you so it's totally useless or worse almost the entire game.
- The telescoping screen and crazy lights don't just make you sick, they can also hide enemies with guns off-screen who can see you but you can't see them, and they deal SO much damage that you may as well trial-and-error your way through a section to see where all the hidden gun-guys are so you don't just die a bunch just from not being psychic.
- To add icing on the cake of cheap enemies with guns, they also have guns with much higher accuracy then you, so they'll routinely empty an entire clip into you while you literally can't hit them that many times from the same distance away with (supposedly) the exact same weapon.
That's about everything, but I'm sure I've forgotten something. Regardless, I hope I've made it evident that the mechanics in this game REALLY needed some rebalancing and re-thinking before launch, because they make an already annoying genre mash-up even less bearable.

Verdict: Not Recommended. For the most part, GARAGE really nails it on the presentation (I mean the trailer certainly sold me on it), but it completely shits the bed mechanically. While playable, a litany of ill-thought out mechanical design choices make the game a challenge that is consistently more frustrating than genuinely enjoyable or fun. Despite getting more fun when you start getting to less crazy-tight corridors (with less, but not absent, rats) in the last 3 or so chapters, it really wears out its welcome at 6 hours, and for a $15 asking price you can do a lot better.

It's a game that LOOKS cool but doesn't play anything at all cool or fun.

Feels like shit and it's boring. Dropped it in the final boss because it was so fucking tedious.

Objectively, it's a weaker top-down twin-stick shooter with pixel graphics, but it was enough fun to run though to the end.