![]() Now I have yet another folder to deal with. At some point I’ve got to wade through ALL of them to see which files might be missing from which places. I’m so very close to switching to Dropbox. Jupiter Hell isn’t afraid to wear its influences on its sleeve, and in reality its homage to DOOM is one of its main selling points. Everything from the gloomy space stations, hoards of demons, heavy weaponry, and thrash-metal soundtrack honours the 90s classics we know and love. Rather than being an FPS, however, Jupiter Hell is a turn-based, isometric roguelike that has been marketed as ‘chess with guns’. After playing the game for several hours I probably wouldn’t jump to that comparison, but that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Let’s take a look at what Jupiter Hell does right, and what doesn’t work so well. You play as a foul-mouthed gunslinger who crashlands on a space station to find that everyone on board has either been brutally massacred or turned into a mindless sack of meat. Putting out a distress signal or crying in the corner wouldn’t make a fun time, so instead you go to work killing everything in sight (or, as our protagonist loves to say, “watering the grass”) and finding out the truth about what’s going on. That’s all there really is to it, but that’s all there needs to be. I liked how Jupiter Hell doesn’t try to overdo context or narrative, it just gives you a gun and says “Raze Hell” (I do love that pun).Īfter a brief but informative tutorial, Jupiter Hell throws you right into the action. You can play as one of three classes: the Marine, the Scout, or the Technician. Each class has a different resource they can utilise, as well as different skills, passives, starting conditions, and traits they can learn as they level up. As a result, the class you begin the run with has a significant impact on gameplay and builds, and there is a good bit of variety both between each class and within the classes themselves. The Marine, for example, is very much your archetypal all-in-guns-blazing kinda class, beginning the run with a passive that heals him at the end of each stage, and perks that favour you being right there in the action. Additionally, Marines use Fury as a resource, which is used to power abilities such as ‘Adrenaline’ which provides the player with a heal. On the other hand, the Scout is able to see the exit to each level on the map, and uses energy to power skills. The Scout’s baseline skill is ‘Stealth’, which allows them to go invisible a few times to escape or reposition. With a class selected, you’ll begin each run with a weapon and some ammo. ![]() The goal of each stage is to kill enemies to gain xp, new weapons, and ammo explore the environment to find chests containing weapons, ammo, health packs, grenades and other resources, as well as stations that have a finite number of charges that can be used to offer benefits such as healing, ammo creation, and weapon-mod creation and ultimately find the elevator to progress to the next stage. Each level is broken up into seven stages, and the levels get progressively more hellish (and of course, more brutal) as you move through them. The procedurally generated stages are fairly small, and generally consist of tight corridors with small to medium-sized rooms to break them up. Not having each stage be too large was the right call, as it keeps the player progressing quickly and doesn’t create tedium when exploring for resources or trying to locate the exit. ![]() I did, however, find the presentation of most of the levels to be quite lacklustre. There isn’t a whole lot of variety between each of them, and they’re not exactly exciting to look at. While the dull colour palette is right at home with the tone of the game and the feelings of oppression and claustrophobia that the levels successfully evoke, they begin to feel dull and repetitive after just a few runs. The procedural generation doesn’t really help with that, either. Navigating the gameworld is done by moving across tiles in 4 directions (up, down, left, and right), and the player can utilise walls and objects as cover to protect themselves from enemy fire.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |