Your intrepid heroes climb walls, get good, and unlock a unlock Pretty Princess. The Dishwasher: Vampire Smile faces the CHAIRQUISITION!
Game: The Dishwasher: Vampire Smile
Webzone: http://store.steampowered.com/app/268990/
Devel: Ska Studios / Flibitijibibo
Engine: FNA
Price: 9.99 / CDN 10.99
Wazzat: Embark on a blood soaked quest of vengeance as either Yuki, a machine-armed, mentally unraveling prisoner, or The Dishwasher, a relentless, reanimated samurai, against the corrupted leaders of society: the Banker, the General, and the Judge.
Mandatory Disclosure: They Sent us keys
CHAIRQUISITION:
– Nooope
– Not sure if want
– Check it out
– Shutupandtakemymonies
Colour key: Venn Jordan Pedro
Makes with the working
- Holds a solid 60 @ 1080.
- Had to restart once in multiplayer.
- Button prompts reverted to the keyboard while using the controlla.
- Holy shit you guys! The multiplayer works!
Shiny / Sounds
- I just really dig the art style from these cats.
- It’s fluid, dark, and gory as all hell.
- Yeah, it still has that cardboard cutout vibe but it works for a brawler.
- It makes noises and shite when you hit stuff so nothing to complain about since you won’t be focused on it in the first place.
- I really do like the art style in this game
- However, what I don’t like is the monotone colour scheme that makes it super easy to lose your character
- Combined with the random blood spatter effects, I can’t see what the hell is going on, and that frustrates me
- Would’ve gotten 3 chairs if it weren’t for that
- You know how in Charlie Murder you’d keep losing track of your character in Multiplayer?
- Here, you keep losing track of your character, in single player!
- That said, I didn’t hate the background music on this one.
- And while the animation is a lot rougher than their latter titles, the general visual aesthetics fit the game very well.
- You can tell that this game came out before Charlie Murder and Salt & Sanctuary.
- But more on that later.
Control
- Yeah, everything works and makes /w the binding but something is slightly off with running up walls.
- Seriously, you cannot rely on that works 100% of the time.
- Button mash, the game!
- I’m serious! I don’t feel like I’m improving all that much in this game as I play.
- Often I feel like it’s blind luck that my button mashing has just the right timing to stun lock 3 or 4 enemies at once.
- That said, each thwack of the Violence Hammer feels very satisfying!
- Only boss or miniboss style monsters don’t get immediately pummeled into the floor with it.
FUN
- On normal this game is being hard on purpose.
- In multiplayer the hard is almost welcome since it causes you to break out of fk around mode and actually focus.
- In single player the hard can simply fk right off because you are already focusing on why your friends never come around anymore.
- Does that sound fun?
- No, it sounds like a mixed bag.
- Here’s the dice, like Charlie muderator this is a no apologies brawler.
- Upgrades, power ups, low-yield thermonuclear nukes, enchanted weasels yeah, none of those are going to save you from getting killed to death early and often.
- Hell, the game is quite proud of how efficient it is at killing you, but I will let Pedro rap about that.
- So, boiled down what do you have? Streets of Rage on fk mothering 11.
- Does it have a story? Dunno and don’t care in the slightest because games like this server one purpose… mash buttons and chill the fk out.
- Unfortunately this one had a big ole swing and miss on the chill out part.
- I don’t need hard in my chill the hell out games.
- This was just another step closer to SKA making Salt & Sanctuary, which they did.
- This is a much less refined charlie murder
- Where that game had a lot of attitude and charm, and colourful characters to compliment the gameplay, this one, just devolves into straight button mashing, and doesn’t really do much for me
- While the pretty princess mode is there just to taunt you, the easy mode is genuinely a little too easy. After getting stuck in a few places on normal, I decided to give it a whirl just to see what the difference was, and you have to be a special kind of dumb to drop below 50% health on any of the fights
- I like a learning curve in my games, one that lets you see how well you’ve improved. This, again, just teaches you how to button mash with greater efficacy
- There is a moves list that tells you the combos for the various weapons you find, but it feels a bit spray and pray when you actually try to execute them
- This game mocks you if you’re not doing good enough.
- Die twice in a row? You unlock the Pretty Princess difficulty level where, not only is everything piss easy, the game gets a rainbow style color palette and instead of blood, enemies bleed out those pink glowy hearts.
- The “Achievement” you get when you unlock Pretty Princess also takes a nice pot shot at game reviewers who bitched the previous Dishwasher game was too hard!
- And while I appreciate a game calling me a scrub and beating my ass down, case in point, I very much enjoyed Hollow Knight, Salt & Sanctuary and other such damn hard games.
- But damn hard is only enjoyable to the point where you feel like with each failure you’re getting better and eventually overcome the challenge.
- In Vampire Smile, like I mentioned in controls, I don’t feel like I’m getting better.
- The simple fact I managed to beat the game still feels like blind luck.
- I didn’t feel like I was improving and overcoming, I felt like I kept getting really lucky and stun locking as many enemies as possible in one combo.
- While I still enjoy a great deal of things about this game, it is painfully obvious Ska Studios still had quite a bit to learn.
- I’ve mentioned many times that, in my opinion, video games live or die on their mechanics. Aesthetics and narrative should serve to complement those mechanics and not get in the way.
- But when you’re actively taking control away from me to show an overlong kill animation, or to show me a door has opened, or to tell me where to go, or to show me that the key I just picked up unlocked the door I’m standing in front of, that doesn’t feel like an organic video game experience.
- It feels condescending and a little bit pretentious. “Look at this awesome art I put in. Look at it! Don’t want to look at it? Tough! You’re going to be sitting there for a full 3 seconds until you learn to enjoy it.”
- So no, I didn’t enjoy The Dishwasher: Vampire Smile very much.