A third person shooter roguelite that so desperately wants to be Risk of Rain but falls short.
Arcadegeddon's honestly got some really great stuff going for it. The shooting feels good, the visuals are solid, and the customization is fun. But past the surface level shine, the game itself is lacking that certain something that makes a game like Risk of Rain 2 so engaging and addicting,
Arcadegeddon's basic structure is: fight through enemies in randomly generated stages, defeat 1 of 4 bosses in a random order, rinse and repeat. The biggest problem is that there are no significant differences between hour one of the game and hour 20 of the game so the monotony sets in fast. The upgrades you get during a run (called "hacks") are incremental changes to things like fire rate, run speed, accuracy, damage, etc. The percentage increases you get to those stats are so minuscule that even after an hour-long run, I truly could not tell if I was doing more damage to enemies or bosses. It doesn't help that enemies scale up with you so any minor changes you get to your stats are completely offset by the enemies you encounter. In contrast, an hour into a Risk of Rain run and you are flying around the map quadruple jumping, one-hitting enemies, and firing 100 rounds a second.
In terms of cross-run progression, you get tickets you can spend on cosmetics, character XP to level up your character and unlock skills, and weapon XP to level up your weapons as you use them. While a level 1 gun versus a level 5 gun is more noticeable difference than the hacks, it's not really fun or exciting. The magazine gets a bit larger and you do a bit more damage. That's cool, but I still never really felt like I was that much better than I was when I started the game... and that took a lot of the satisfaction out of playing.
The weapon variety in the game is quite good. There are various weapon types and elements. You can hold 3 weapons at once and guns are constantly dropping from enemies to encourage you to mix it up and try different combinations. But after a few hours of playing, I found a weapon combo I liked and mostly stuck with that the rest of the game unless challenges required I use something different.
As for story, you'll play through a pretty loose story which mainly consists of you accepting a series of challenges to accomplish during your runs. Those challenges, however, were never really that unique so you could accomplish almost all of them through just normal play.
As a multiplayer game, it's pretty fun. I played with 3 friends a bit toward the beginning, but the launch of the game was so riddled with bugs that most of my friends quickly bounced off. Determined to get the horrible Platinum, I stuck with it. The bugs eventually were fixed but the community that remained was depressingly small. Matchmaking never filled anymore so I mostly played solo or with one other friend.
Overall, the game was pretty fun and had some potential, but they really could take a page out of Risk of Rain 2's book to make the game just generally more fun and replayable.
+ Shooting feels solid
+ Good visual style
+ Great gun variety
+ Fun character customization options
- Lackluster progression that wasn't rewarding
- Runs barely change from minute-to-minute
- Launch was riddled with bugs
- Terrible trophy list that requires a brutally long grind
Arcadegeddon's honestly got some really great stuff going for it. The shooting feels good, the visuals are solid, and the customization is fun. But past the surface level shine, the game itself is lacking that certain something that makes a game like Risk of Rain 2 so engaging and addicting,
Arcadegeddon's basic structure is: fight through enemies in randomly generated stages, defeat 1 of 4 bosses in a random order, rinse and repeat. The biggest problem is that there are no significant differences between hour one of the game and hour 20 of the game so the monotony sets in fast. The upgrades you get during a run (called "hacks") are incremental changes to things like fire rate, run speed, accuracy, damage, etc. The percentage increases you get to those stats are so minuscule that even after an hour-long run, I truly could not tell if I was doing more damage to enemies or bosses. It doesn't help that enemies scale up with you so any minor changes you get to your stats are completely offset by the enemies you encounter. In contrast, an hour into a Risk of Rain run and you are flying around the map quadruple jumping, one-hitting enemies, and firing 100 rounds a second.
In terms of cross-run progression, you get tickets you can spend on cosmetics, character XP to level up your character and unlock skills, and weapon XP to level up your weapons as you use them. While a level 1 gun versus a level 5 gun is more noticeable difference than the hacks, it's not really fun or exciting. The magazine gets a bit larger and you do a bit more damage. That's cool, but I still never really felt like I was that much better than I was when I started the game... and that took a lot of the satisfaction out of playing.
The weapon variety in the game is quite good. There are various weapon types and elements. You can hold 3 weapons at once and guns are constantly dropping from enemies to encourage you to mix it up and try different combinations. But after a few hours of playing, I found a weapon combo I liked and mostly stuck with that the rest of the game unless challenges required I use something different.
As for story, you'll play through a pretty loose story which mainly consists of you accepting a series of challenges to accomplish during your runs. Those challenges, however, were never really that unique so you could accomplish almost all of them through just normal play.
As a multiplayer game, it's pretty fun. I played with 3 friends a bit toward the beginning, but the launch of the game was so riddled with bugs that most of my friends quickly bounced off. Determined to get the horrible Platinum, I stuck with it. The bugs eventually were fixed but the community that remained was depressingly small. Matchmaking never filled anymore so I mostly played solo or with one other friend.
Overall, the game was pretty fun and had some potential, but they really could take a page out of Risk of Rain 2's book to make the game just generally more fun and replayable.
+ Shooting feels solid
+ Good visual style
+ Great gun variety
+ Fun character customization options
- Lackluster progression that wasn't rewarding
- Runs barely change from minute-to-minute
- Launch was riddled with bugs
- Terrible trophy list that requires a brutally long grind