Genuinely, one of the worst games on my Steam library. And I have Mr.President!, I'm dead fucking serious. There's no appeal to this whatsoever. The most garbo game you can buy on Steam. It baffles me that this made it to consoles (yeah, believe it or not, this is on Switch, PS4 and Xbox One) and that they're charging more than 10 bucks (5 bucks more for the soundtrack, like who's even going to listen to it!!!!) for one of the most low-quality, shovelware-tier and uninspired game released in recent years.
A game that is constantly compared to this one is Happy Wheels, and I mean, the inspiration is very clear, but once you start playing, every comparison you could have made is gone. This isn't referring to Happy Wheels being 2D and Guts & Glory being in 3D. Happy Wheels level creator could let you do lots of things, things that were more than an uninspired obstacle course or a quiz about some random youtuber. But even then, the work that could be done with the visuals could be something impressive. Things like Rope Swing, Sword/Ball Throw and many many more styles that made use of every mechanic and could even cross over each other are nowhere to be seen here. All you can do in Guts & Glory are uninspired obstacle courses or quizzes about some random youtuber. Because, like with most successful TinyBuild games, this was made specifically for YouTubers and Streamers, for them to react to the wacky physics for an hour or so, pump out another garbage Let's Play and make kids want to buy this. I bet you that everyone who says this game is good or decent have no more that 1 hour played and haven't played more than the first two official track groups, and if you think I don't have any base for this statement, go check the achievements percentages. I have played more than the first two official track groups, and I can confirm all of them are the most low-effort they could be.
This game is riddled with shitty level design, questionable controls, inexistent art style consisting of Unity Asset Store props and unpolished physics. Almost every vehicle loses control all by themselves; for some reason Zoe always leans to the left, the ATV guy (I forgot the name) makes extreme turns, Larry is straight up horseshit and so on. The only characters that are worth playing as are John (the guy with the kid), the Yang family and Pedro, the others don't add anything of significance to the gameplay. In fact, they worsen the gameplay further. And to all this, add up some minor details like shitty language localisation, the Unity Asset flip houses, props and models, and bad interfaces and menus. This feels like a game Dev student first project. I know making games is hard, but there are indie games out there made by one person that don't even have a publisher and have far more quality than this. If anything, this game proves removing Greenlight was a mistake. Happy Wheels at least was a good videogame.
A game that is constantly compared to this one is Happy Wheels, and I mean, the inspiration is very clear, but once you start playing, every comparison you could have made is gone. This isn't referring to Happy Wheels being 2D and Guts & Glory being in 3D. Happy Wheels level creator could let you do lots of things, things that were more than an uninspired obstacle course or a quiz about some random youtuber. But even then, the work that could be done with the visuals could be something impressive. Things like Rope Swing, Sword/Ball Throw and many many more styles that made use of every mechanic and could even cross over each other are nowhere to be seen here. All you can do in Guts & Glory are uninspired obstacle courses or quizzes about some random youtuber. Because, like with most successful TinyBuild games, this was made specifically for YouTubers and Streamers, for them to react to the wacky physics for an hour or so, pump out another garbage Let's Play and make kids want to buy this. I bet you that everyone who says this game is good or decent have no more that 1 hour played and haven't played more than the first two official track groups, and if you think I don't have any base for this statement, go check the achievements percentages. I have played more than the first two official track groups, and I can confirm all of them are the most low-effort they could be.
This game is riddled with shitty level design, questionable controls, inexistent art style consisting of Unity Asset Store props and unpolished physics. Almost every vehicle loses control all by themselves; for some reason Zoe always leans to the left, the ATV guy (I forgot the name) makes extreme turns, Larry is straight up horseshit and so on. The only characters that are worth playing as are John (the guy with the kid), the Yang family and Pedro, the others don't add anything of significance to the gameplay. In fact, they worsen the gameplay further. And to all this, add up some minor details like shitty language localisation, the Unity Asset flip houses, props and models, and bad interfaces and menus. This feels like a game Dev student first project. I know making games is hard, but there are indie games out there made by one person that don't even have a publisher and have far more quality than this. If anything, this game proves removing Greenlight was a mistake. Happy Wheels at least was a good videogame.
There's nothing super wrong with it but it's uninspired and definitely could be much more fun
I bought this thinking it would be a cool 3D spiritual successor to Happy Wheels, and while parts of that were in there, it's mostly just a poorly made Unity creation. However, for just that reason, I feel like I appreciate the game and its charm at points.
I love how violent this game is. I rest my case.
Happy Wheels but with Unity assets
Games I Like That Everybody Else Dislikes
"Happy Wheels but 3D" really should have been bigger than this, like, a LOT bigger. But I think by this time people were outgrowing the "meme=game" era so for a myriad of reasons - both its own fault and not - it was promptly forgotten about. Regardless, it's still mostly a blast to play especially today. It'd be an easy 3.5 stars if not for some B.S. glitched trophies which have yet to be remedied five years later. Not enough levels, not enough characters, still a bit unfinished-feeling even for a project like this - but you can't tell me it isn't totally rad when your character gets instantaneously blown apart into mincemeat by a cannonball or flying landmine, or slicing apart like warm butter upon contact with a spinning buzzsaw. And few things give me a warm, fuzzy nostalgic feeling quite like hearing UberHaxorNova comically screaming.
"Happy Wheels but 3D" really should have been bigger than this, like, a LOT bigger. But I think by this time people were outgrowing the "meme=game" era so for a myriad of reasons - both its own fault and not - it was promptly forgotten about. Regardless, it's still mostly a blast to play especially today. It'd be an easy 3.5 stars if not for some B.S. glitched trophies which have yet to be remedied five years later. Not enough levels, not enough characters, still a bit unfinished-feeling even for a project like this - but you can't tell me it isn't totally rad when your character gets instantaneously blown apart into mincemeat by a cannonball or flying landmine, or slicing apart like warm butter upon contact with a spinning buzzsaw. And few things give me a warm, fuzzy nostalgic feeling quite like hearing UberHaxorNova comically screaming.
Guts and Glory is an early example of a title that lost its playability being ported to the Switch. If getting sliced in half or impaled by a buzzsaw is a can’t miss experience, I would recommend looking at another platform to play it on.
tinybuild are nothing
Original review published on Flickering Myth: https://www.flickeringmyth.com/2018/09/video-game-review-guts-and-glory/
When I was growing up, there was an MMORPG called Toontown that used to be advertised all the time. Every week brought a new version of the same basic commercial, which prided itself on the motto you could “do almost anything.” But even as a kid this always felt strange to me- what exactly did they mean by “almost anything”? Surely you couldn’t pull a GTA and murder others right (even in GTA you technically can’t do that without triggering local law enforcement). This got the imagination cogs turning in my head as to a potential title wherein you actually could commit any action without fear of being reprimanded.
Though far from it, I can’t help but think of Guts and Glory as a prototype for the kind of limitless game I envisioned as a child. Developed by HakJak Productions and published by tinyBuild Games, Guts and Glory might be the strangest video game I have played in a while. It takes the track levels of sports games like the Skate series and combines them with a hyperviolent consequence system. Does this polymerization triumph, or does the game fail as another experimental disaster? The short answer is it works to an extent, but if you want the longer one read on!
To clarify, there is no real story here. The premise is regular folks are invited to participate in a series of violent sporting events called the “Guts and Glory.” There are eight sections, divided into 7-9 levels, and while some of those levels make-up a pseudo-arc for a specific playable character (outlined by a short text blurb in the opening waiting screen), you really are just beating each course for the sake of beating it, and not to progress further in some overarching narrative.
Because of this, I will be tackling graphics first, which are a mixed bag. On the one hand, it’s evident that the HakJak team was primarily interested in creating an effective physics engine for their gameplay, and thus focused their budget on that. On the other, it doesn’t excuse the fact that Guts and Glory is bland. Everything, from the houses to the grounds to the NPCs, have minimal texture work done. And look, I wasn’t expecting something out of Unreal Engine, but I was at least hoping for RuneScape-level quality.
Still, the aesthetic would at least be tolerable were it not for the heavy-emphasis on grey. Most of the worlds you’ll explore have so many achromatic areas that it can give the title an unintentional desaturated look, which, personally, strained my eyes after playing for more than an hour.
That being said, this is definitely not a game that people will be playing for the graphics, so we move onto sound. You know, Guts and Glory does feature a lot of stock and repetitive noises, but it actually works here compared to other titles because of how un-serious the game is. It’s like those old Tom and Jerry cartoons from MGM- it doesn’t matter how many times you hear those same pots and pans crashing or Tom emitting his iconic scream: it’s still entertaining as heck. And that’s the situation I find myself in with Guts and Glory. Sure the vehicles sound alike, and every character has their own repetitive yelp, but they're all wrapped in a level of amusement that never quite goes away.
With the score, though, I’m not as enthusiastic. See, HakJak made a seemingly-wise, but actually bad decision with the soundtrack, and that was to make it gleefully cheery. In theory, this would be a good choice since Guts and Glory is a cynically blissful game: happy to throw you into some awful situations. But here’s the thing guys- when you choose to adopt a trial-and-error system wherein players will repeatedly die, the music has to actually be soothing. Because what happens is, when you get inevitably frustrated over the repetitive deaths, the score starts to feel very grating very fast, whereas when you have calming tunes in the background, it makes the entire situation much more bearable. One of the most famous examples of this contrast is “Stickerbush Symphony” from the “Bramble Scramble” level of Donkey Kong Country 2; a tough, yet memorable course where you can maintain your sanity courtesy of David Wise’s glorious synths.
Now, not every track in the Guts and Glory OST follows this template- during the later parts of the game, you actually do get some of those more-leisure melodies in the form of hard Jazz. But unfortunately, the vast majority is the former, so you will want to beat those stages as fast as you can, lest you fall into an irate cycle.
But is the gameplay really that frustrating-inducing? The answer is it depends on who you are as a gamer. The team at HakJak did a great job creating an effective physics engine, which does make each round fun. Sure, there are times where the ground feels a little too slippery, but overall every vehicle controls well, whether you’re riding a bike or driving a motorcycle. Environments are well-realized, and there is a lot of genuine creativity on board here. I mean seriously, who else would have thought up a scheme where you’re dodging jeeps in the desert driven by kangaroos armed with crossbows? Or a theme park equipped with lasers and swinging timber traps? Or a ninja-styled obstacle course full of exploding teddy bears? Yes, there were times where I was literally biting my controller over some of the dumb scenarios or over-spaced checkpoints (or this neglected coding error wherein instantly pressing the boost button upon a bicycle respawn causes you to unintentionally wheelie), but overall I was happy with the game….with two exceptions.
One was a level early on which I just could not beat (I guarantee you you will know what it is when you get to it), and the second was an entire section dedicated to a terrible character named Larry. Larry is a homeless man who you are required to play as for an arc set in the urban cityscape. He navigates through a rocket-propelled chair that is an abomination to control (if you thought the flying mechanics in LEGO Batman 2 were bad, you will be begging to go back to them). The biggest problem is that you can’t turn Larry with the joystick or mouse: he has to be rotated left, right, up or down by four different keys, which, as you can imagine, is a pain in the arse to do when you’re in flight. It honestly reminds me of the control layout for the original System Shock– why make things so complicated by mapping out different functions to different keys when it could all be tied to one place (the mouse)?
Larry was so bad, I admittedly ended up skipping the majority of his part. That being said, if you get the hang of it, at best it’ll just give you another hour of gameplay. It took me about five hours to beat Guts and Glory (make it six if you count the hypothetical extra hour from Larry), which is a hair below the seven hours I require for a title that charges $15.00. That being said, Guts and Glory could be an exception to the rule as there are a lot of community-created levels, similar to Super Mario Maker, in which you can spend a lot more time completing crazy tracks conceived by fans. In addition to this, HakJak appears to be consistently updating their game, showing that they are dedicated to expanding it.
So overall, Guts and Glory could be worth it. If a Dark Souls meets Paperboy meets Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater meets Super Meat Boy mash-up sounds up your ally, I say go for it. For others, you may still get some entertainment value out of the things- just make sure it fits your personal pricing model.
Pros:
+Imaginative level design
+Old school cartoon throwback with the sound and gameplay
Cons:
-Annoying score
-Terrible outlier character (Larry)
-Some difficulty spikes
When I was growing up, there was an MMORPG called Toontown that used to be advertised all the time. Every week brought a new version of the same basic commercial, which prided itself on the motto you could “do almost anything.” But even as a kid this always felt strange to me- what exactly did they mean by “almost anything”? Surely you couldn’t pull a GTA and murder others right (even in GTA you technically can’t do that without triggering local law enforcement). This got the imagination cogs turning in my head as to a potential title wherein you actually could commit any action without fear of being reprimanded.
Though far from it, I can’t help but think of Guts and Glory as a prototype for the kind of limitless game I envisioned as a child. Developed by HakJak Productions and published by tinyBuild Games, Guts and Glory might be the strangest video game I have played in a while. It takes the track levels of sports games like the Skate series and combines them with a hyperviolent consequence system. Does this polymerization triumph, or does the game fail as another experimental disaster? The short answer is it works to an extent, but if you want the longer one read on!
To clarify, there is no real story here. The premise is regular folks are invited to participate in a series of violent sporting events called the “Guts and Glory.” There are eight sections, divided into 7-9 levels, and while some of those levels make-up a pseudo-arc for a specific playable character (outlined by a short text blurb in the opening waiting screen), you really are just beating each course for the sake of beating it, and not to progress further in some overarching narrative.
Because of this, I will be tackling graphics first, which are a mixed bag. On the one hand, it’s evident that the HakJak team was primarily interested in creating an effective physics engine for their gameplay, and thus focused their budget on that. On the other, it doesn’t excuse the fact that Guts and Glory is bland. Everything, from the houses to the grounds to the NPCs, have minimal texture work done. And look, I wasn’t expecting something out of Unreal Engine, but I was at least hoping for RuneScape-level quality.
Still, the aesthetic would at least be tolerable were it not for the heavy-emphasis on grey. Most of the worlds you’ll explore have so many achromatic areas that it can give the title an unintentional desaturated look, which, personally, strained my eyes after playing for more than an hour.
That being said, this is definitely not a game that people will be playing for the graphics, so we move onto sound. You know, Guts and Glory does feature a lot of stock and repetitive noises, but it actually works here compared to other titles because of how un-serious the game is. It’s like those old Tom and Jerry cartoons from MGM- it doesn’t matter how many times you hear those same pots and pans crashing or Tom emitting his iconic scream: it’s still entertaining as heck. And that’s the situation I find myself in with Guts and Glory. Sure the vehicles sound alike, and every character has their own repetitive yelp, but they're all wrapped in a level of amusement that never quite goes away.
With the score, though, I’m not as enthusiastic. See, HakJak made a seemingly-wise, but actually bad decision with the soundtrack, and that was to make it gleefully cheery. In theory, this would be a good choice since Guts and Glory is a cynically blissful game: happy to throw you into some awful situations. But here’s the thing guys- when you choose to adopt a trial-and-error system wherein players will repeatedly die, the music has to actually be soothing. Because what happens is, when you get inevitably frustrated over the repetitive deaths, the score starts to feel very grating very fast, whereas when you have calming tunes in the background, it makes the entire situation much more bearable. One of the most famous examples of this contrast is “Stickerbush Symphony” from the “Bramble Scramble” level of Donkey Kong Country 2; a tough, yet memorable course where you can maintain your sanity courtesy of David Wise’s glorious synths.
Now, not every track in the Guts and Glory OST follows this template- during the later parts of the game, you actually do get some of those more-leisure melodies in the form of hard Jazz. But unfortunately, the vast majority is the former, so you will want to beat those stages as fast as you can, lest you fall into an irate cycle.
But is the gameplay really that frustrating-inducing? The answer is it depends on who you are as a gamer. The team at HakJak did a great job creating an effective physics engine, which does make each round fun. Sure, there are times where the ground feels a little too slippery, but overall every vehicle controls well, whether you’re riding a bike or driving a motorcycle. Environments are well-realized, and there is a lot of genuine creativity on board here. I mean seriously, who else would have thought up a scheme where you’re dodging jeeps in the desert driven by kangaroos armed with crossbows? Or a theme park equipped with lasers and swinging timber traps? Or a ninja-styled obstacle course full of exploding teddy bears? Yes, there were times where I was literally biting my controller over some of the dumb scenarios or over-spaced checkpoints (or this neglected coding error wherein instantly pressing the boost button upon a bicycle respawn causes you to unintentionally wheelie), but overall I was happy with the game….with two exceptions.
One was a level early on which I just could not beat (I guarantee you you will know what it is when you get to it), and the second was an entire section dedicated to a terrible character named Larry. Larry is a homeless man who you are required to play as for an arc set in the urban cityscape. He navigates through a rocket-propelled chair that is an abomination to control (if you thought the flying mechanics in LEGO Batman 2 were bad, you will be begging to go back to them). The biggest problem is that you can’t turn Larry with the joystick or mouse: he has to be rotated left, right, up or down by four different keys, which, as you can imagine, is a pain in the arse to do when you’re in flight. It honestly reminds me of the control layout for the original System Shock– why make things so complicated by mapping out different functions to different keys when it could all be tied to one place (the mouse)?
Larry was so bad, I admittedly ended up skipping the majority of his part. That being said, if you get the hang of it, at best it’ll just give you another hour of gameplay. It took me about five hours to beat Guts and Glory (make it six if you count the hypothetical extra hour from Larry), which is a hair below the seven hours I require for a title that charges $15.00. That being said, Guts and Glory could be an exception to the rule as there are a lot of community-created levels, similar to Super Mario Maker, in which you can spend a lot more time completing crazy tracks conceived by fans. In addition to this, HakJak appears to be consistently updating their game, showing that they are dedicated to expanding it.
So overall, Guts and Glory could be worth it. If a Dark Souls meets Paperboy meets Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater meets Super Meat Boy mash-up sounds up your ally, I say go for it. For others, you may still get some entertainment value out of the things- just make sure it fits your personal pricing model.
Pros:
+Imaginative level design
+Old school cartoon throwback with the sound and gameplay
Cons:
-Annoying score
-Terrible outlier character (Larry)
-Some difficulty spikes
"What if we make Happy Wheels but bad"
A 3D Happy Wheels shouldn't suck this much
A 3D Happy Wheels shouldn't suck this much
Easily described as "3D Happy Wheels", this game has very little originality in its concept or execution. While there are some good gauntlet-style levels, everything quickly gets very repetitive. The "rocket chair" stages are also utterly excruciating to complete and make me want to uninstall the game ASAP. Stick to Happy Wheels - the user-created levels provide more than enough content.
This game is goofy. But I won’t lie, its a fun time.
I heard you like Happy Wheels, so I made a shit game to prey on your nostalgia