I have to give it to the developers ... they obviously worked a long time on the combat in this game because it is the most fun and satisfying combats I've experienced in a really long time. Speed Brawl mixes racing, 2D fighters and beat'em up all together to create a splendidly fast-paced brawler and I can't stress this enough... it does it RIGHT. This doesn't go on to say the game is perfect, it has its shortcomings and I'll get to that in a bit, but as logic has it I need to talk about what’s good first.
Combat
you can move very fast and freely and use the world as you like, every character comes with its special and ultimate attacks, out of the total 6 characters in this game you can pick two and tag between each whenever you want and can create good combos using that, the stamina bar is what you need to use special attacks and once the focus bar is full you can launch your ultimate attack.
Each character has its own skill tree and can equip 3 items, a glove for damage, boots for defense and an accessory that has special effects, they all can come with the ability to either inflect or resist status effects.
The game focuses greatly on speed so you have to keep your momentum going which like I said before you can use the world with it, you can jump off walls or kick off them to bounce back, you can use poles to swing around and change your direction while maintaining your speed, you can use enemies to bounce to other ones, dodging and dashing are two things in the game, dodging you can use to ...well dodge attacks and perform counter attacks while dashing you can use to push through enemies or gain a higher speed or height, it’s all so fast and satisfying to score as many combo as you can and finish it as fast as possible, if you are familiar with 2D fighting games that allows you to call your mate to do a swift assist attack just like in king of fighters, you can do the same in this game, remember you can also tag and switch character instantly and it’s really cool, also if you ever got hit and knocked down you can instantly tag out rather than waiting for your character to get back up which consumes time.
Levels
are split between time limits or score, every level has a bronze, silver and gold tier, some levels are basically a race, how fast can you reach the end while spinning on poles spread around, some are fighting levels but speed still counts and some are limited time levels that pins you down with a boss and you try to beat it as much as you can before the time runs out, think of street fighter bonus car level style except it bites back.
The world is filled with speed boosts, poles, explosives barrels, chainsaws, spikes and more, so you can't just run around. you need to see where you're going, a nice touch to keep you on your edge at all times.
Leaderboards are a nice touch also, every level has its own leaderboard rankings and you can see how good you did and challenge yourself to a higher level.
Story
I'm not very impressed with the story, you're in the world of speed brawl where tournaments are held for brawlers like you to rush as fast as you can and kill all those scary monsters while the crowd cheers for you but the arena owners want you to lose so they make more money because they bet on you losing, it basically goes like an old comic where the villain throws everything they can at you and your heroes beat it with the can-do attitude and the bad guys go all "OH NO you beat me but next time I will have my revenge" and it goes on and on ...and on ....and more so until the game ends basically leaving you with the desire to just skim through it but for the sake of writing a better review I stayed through it all.
The game is level based so every time you start a level they have to start a dialogue with the most cliché type of villains that says you'll fail this time and your characters are all crazy type of people, they're all quirky and insane but good people and sticks together, though I really wished they reduced the amount of dialogue, I hate skipping so I read it but I wanted it to be shorter and less cliché and obvious, you can almost tell what they're about to say next.
Visuals
They are simply outstanding, just look at how beautiful they all look, the animations are on point and all the flashy effects are brilliant, but perhaps it is too flashy and your character does blend in too well with it so you end up losing sight of where your character is especially if you're playing coop with a friend, you'll say stuff like "OMG where the hell did my character go" very frequently haha!
When it comes to difficulty in this game I never found it challenging considering that most of the time I finish a level in a much better time than the requirements for the gold trophy, usually games that have those type of trophies on each level makes the gold one being difficult to obtain, for this game however I got most of them on the very first try, I wish they had made it harder so I'd replay all of them because the gameplay is so satisfying that replaying levels is worth it
One thing I really disliked about this game is camera controls, in so many levels the camera would stay on the top side when you need to look down to see if there are enemies remaining or a trap and I tested this both with single player and coop and on coop holy hell it’s on a different level of crazy, you GET used to it eventually, you do but it’s very annoying I wish there were any type of controls in option to set it to get farther when we move away from each other rather than staying in an angle where we both lose sight of where we used to be.
I encountered several bugs in which a character, most notably Cassie, would clip through the walls and get trapped there and you can't escape, or when a chainsaw also clipped through walls and kept bugging out, or when a door is about to close and you're near it and you just get jammed there for good.
Managing your inventory sucks, you get drops after every level and it’s hard to keep track on what’s good or bad so you wanna sell them, there is no "Sell all" button, you have to sell them each individually and it takes time since you have to click on it go to sell and hit confirm, to the point where you'll want to do it quickly and end up probably accidentally selling an item you have equipped.
The game suffers from stuttering issues and freezes every now and then, when you finish a level or start a new one, or sell an item it freezes for a second which might be a problem with my laptop so I tested it in a gaming desktop and it had the same issue although a bit less frequent, so my best guess the game would run better on an SSD or just needs some optimization because it ran both my laptop and desktop's cpu/gpu on a high level, higher than Overwatch, CSGO and many other 3D games to the point where my laptop's GPU temperature reached 93C and it never did that on any other game at all.
نظرات