L.G.C. |Reviews| — McDROID

Game: McDROID
Webzone: http://store.steampowered.com/app/252970/
Devel: Elefantopia
Engine: Unity
Price: 19.99 / CDN 21.99 (75% off until the 19th)

Wazzat: A super frantic Arcade Tower Defense, McDROID starts gently then progressively challenges your trigger finger and your wits (and your sanity) as you multitask like a robotic-spider-doggy-thing: running, shooting, building base, herding, healing, harvesting, repairing, planting, upgrading, researching, frying giant snail-hammer-thing with a giant-tesla-on-your-back (it actually happens).

CHAIRQUISITION:
– Nooope

– Not sure if want

– Check it out

– Shutupandtakemymonies

Makes with the working

V-

Performance is not that great even at 1080P.
It struggles to hit 60ferps regulary.
At 2160P it will often drop to 20+
I’m dinging it a chair for not working /w a contolla plugged in.

J-

Network multiplayer is a wee buggy

P-

Total-

Shiny / Sounds

V-

How far we’ve come.
When this game was first in alpha 2013’ish it looked amazeballs for a Linux title.
Fast forward to 2016… yeah, not so much.
That’s not to say it’s fugly by any measure.
In fact, the cartoon cell-shaded aesthetic looks a bit of alright. Hell, it even holds up.
The bright colours and detailed environments are a nice change from the bog standard hipster-pixel tower defense games of late.
However, the AA is so horrid I want to call it rubbish but that would be an insult to rubbish.
The retro-rock soundtrack works for what it is and the limited voice work is borderline entertaining.
Menu text is a bit jacked when running at 2160P.

J-

There is voice acting. Its limited and pretty annoying though
Nothing wrong about the graphics. The visuals are consistent, being a game about a cute robot
It’s not entirely cell shaded, which can be a little jarring
Overall, nothing wrong with it, but nothing to write home about either

P-

There’s a slight bug with the sprites, in that the alpha channel is on the same layer as the post processing and it causes some weird squares to show up on screen.
Outside of that, the graphics are good enough and the cell shading will ensure it’ll hold up for a few more years.
Not complaining about the sounds.
We get our share of non-voice-acted games, when they clearly benefited from it and, while this game didn’t exactly need it, it’s a nice touch.

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Control

V-

Now, it clearly states “QWERTY only and Gamepad not supported” in the sys requirements so I’m not dinging it a chair for that… BUT
Having to hunt down +disable_gamepad on to make the damn thing work is not a good start.
More importantly this will cause the average user to insta-refund.
This is the second game that breaks controls if a gamepad is plugged in.
That said the keyboard/gerbil layout is logical and works fine.

J-

P-

That full controller support is a lie!
Can’t rebind controls.

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FUN

V-

It’s TD with nothing new.
That’s not necessarily a bad thing if you consider TD the second coming of baby jesus but at 19.99 it’s a tough sell.
Once the novelty of collecting strawberries and upgrading your tachikoma wears off things get repetitive with a quickness.
That’s not to say it isn’t challenging since it becomes FK you hard later on.
One interesting feature is being able to invite your mates to help you sort some levels but as we found out the other night that can be a little hit-or-miss.
Speaking of multiplayer… yeah, it’s a ghost town.
Our online adventure made up 3/4ths of the playerbase.
When I say 3/4 I mean there were four people online and we were three of them.

J-

They’ve certainly upped the difficulty since the last time
I still think tower defense games are boring, and this one probably won’t change your mind
I think they imply that Michael Jackson is jewish in this

P-

There’s been a lot of work put into this game.
It’s very clearly a work of love… just not mine
It takes a special kind of sauce to get me interested in a tower defense game, nowadays.
And, unfortunately, it’s not the case with this game.
It’s mediocre.
It has a few issues, it has a few things it does well, but neither are worthy bothering your parents with actual physical mail.
Remember last week when I said Bound by Flame was the kind of mediocre I enjoyed?
McDroid is the other kind.

Total-

Final –