A B movie satire, sadly with B movie quality.
The Deadly Tower of Monsters is a fantastic idea on paper. A game pretending to be a studio doing a directors commentary recording to an old Sci-fi B movie as you play. Sadly though the premise is great, and it sometimes gets aspects of it right, it doesn't always land all it's punches where it should leaving a fairly flat experience by the end.
You play the role of one of three characters, Dick Starspeed, Scarlet Nova and Dick's co-pilot, the unnamed Robot. Dick crash-lands on a planet to find out it's emperor is mistreating the apes that live there, teaming up with the emperors daughter they decided to scale the tower and overthrow him. That's pretty much the extent of the story.
As they travel the game uses a ton of tributes to retro sci-fi media visible everywhere from Flash Gordon, Planet of the Apes, King Kong, Buck Rogers etc. One of it's strongest aspects is it's retro aesthetic and designs with old glass dome helmets, strings visible from enemies like puppets, the color filter etc. It also makes really good use of the director's meta commentary about things happening as you progress and while not every line is a winner some of them are genuinely quite funny. It's just a shame the final act and ending are so unneeded and generally poor letting the rest of the game's theme and characters down.
What really hurts the game though and leaves it such a mediocre experience is the gameplay itself. To be blunt, it's clunky and boring. The game is essentially a twinstick shooter but it just feels awful to play. You can either attack in melee or with a variety of guns expanding your arsenal as you travel. When attacking up close and personal enemies will often hit you first and rag doll you onto the floor so you end up just flailing attacks towards them to stop it. The ranged attacks aren't hugely better with aiming being a bit dodgy at best. I found a lot of the guns pretty meh to use as well which considering the theme was a let down really. What compounds all of this is that the camera is mostly fixed and it feels like it shouldn't be due to the tower climbing nature of the game I kept trying to move it around , I just found the whole thing uncomfortable in a way I don't with most twin stick shooters.
It did have one stand out mechanic I felt was under baked of pressing R1 to look over the edge and fire at enemies coming up the tower to attack you. I found that it didn't always work though unless you were in the exact right spot to do it and a lot of times enemies came up so fast that you had to break out of it to attack them normally. This could have been a much cooler feature than it was, but that applies to the whole game, it just feels like wasted potential.
For example you can play as 3 characters. Each character has maybe 2-3 abilities that are really different and one each needed to make progress against certain tower obstacles. It's just pointless, it's very rare this happens forcing you to find a change point to change characters to do it. Everything else is the same, they share weapons and the very basic upgrade system and don't feel unique at all so why bother? Speaking of upgrades, I forgot half way through to do them at the stations because they were annoying to use and the game was so easy you simply didn't need more health, energy or cooldowns really.
The entire game is full of good ideas just poorly implemented. Overall getting the platinum and seeing everything took 6 hours. I got it free on PS+ 5 years ago and only just got around to it so can't complain, I just feel frustrated because this had a lot more potential to be a funny and clever experience but sadly just ends up something I'll totally forget about in a month or so.
+ Idea is great.
+ 50's sci-fi aesthetic and references add character.
+ Director can be genuinely entertaining to listen to.
- Ending is nonsense. Part 4 feels redundant.
- Gameplay is clunky feeling.
- Camera angles and no free movement didn't really work for me.
- Multiple characters and ability obstacles seem pointless.
The Deadly Tower of Monsters is a fantastic idea on paper. A game pretending to be a studio doing a directors commentary recording to an old Sci-fi B movie as you play. Sadly though the premise is great, and it sometimes gets aspects of it right, it doesn't always land all it's punches where it should leaving a fairly flat experience by the end.
You play the role of one of three characters, Dick Starspeed, Scarlet Nova and Dick's co-pilot, the unnamed Robot. Dick crash-lands on a planet to find out it's emperor is mistreating the apes that live there, teaming up with the emperors daughter they decided to scale the tower and overthrow him. That's pretty much the extent of the story.
As they travel the game uses a ton of tributes to retro sci-fi media visible everywhere from Flash Gordon, Planet of the Apes, King Kong, Buck Rogers etc. One of it's strongest aspects is it's retro aesthetic and designs with old glass dome helmets, strings visible from enemies like puppets, the color filter etc. It also makes really good use of the director's meta commentary about things happening as you progress and while not every line is a winner some of them are genuinely quite funny. It's just a shame the final act and ending are so unneeded and generally poor letting the rest of the game's theme and characters down.
What really hurts the game though and leaves it such a mediocre experience is the gameplay itself. To be blunt, it's clunky and boring. The game is essentially a twinstick shooter but it just feels awful to play. You can either attack in melee or with a variety of guns expanding your arsenal as you travel. When attacking up close and personal enemies will often hit you first and rag doll you onto the floor so you end up just flailing attacks towards them to stop it. The ranged attacks aren't hugely better with aiming being a bit dodgy at best. I found a lot of the guns pretty meh to use as well which considering the theme was a let down really. What compounds all of this is that the camera is mostly fixed and it feels like it shouldn't be due to the tower climbing nature of the game I kept trying to move it around , I just found the whole thing uncomfortable in a way I don't with most twin stick shooters.
It did have one stand out mechanic I felt was under baked of pressing R1 to look over the edge and fire at enemies coming up the tower to attack you. I found that it didn't always work though unless you were in the exact right spot to do it and a lot of times enemies came up so fast that you had to break out of it to attack them normally. This could have been a much cooler feature than it was, but that applies to the whole game, it just feels like wasted potential.
For example you can play as 3 characters. Each character has maybe 2-3 abilities that are really different and one each needed to make progress against certain tower obstacles. It's just pointless, it's very rare this happens forcing you to find a change point to change characters to do it. Everything else is the same, they share weapons and the very basic upgrade system and don't feel unique at all so why bother? Speaking of upgrades, I forgot half way through to do them at the stations because they were annoying to use and the game was so easy you simply didn't need more health, energy or cooldowns really.
The entire game is full of good ideas just poorly implemented. Overall getting the platinum and seeing everything took 6 hours. I got it free on PS+ 5 years ago and only just got around to it so can't complain, I just feel frustrated because this had a lot more potential to be a funny and clever experience but sadly just ends up something I'll totally forget about in a month or so.
+ Idea is great.
+ 50's sci-fi aesthetic and references add character.
+ Director can be genuinely entertaining to listen to.
- Ending is nonsense. Part 4 feels redundant.
- Gameplay is clunky feeling.
- Camera angles and no free movement didn't really work for me.
- Multiple characters and ability obstacles seem pointless.