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It's not too common these days to see a mobile action game like Madness/Endless. This stealth/action/horror game supplies plenty of challenges using its unique control scheme and isn't shy about being downright devilish in its level design. Not everything Madness/Endlessquite satisfies, but even at its lowest points, the feeling of bouncing around a room at breakneck speeds to kill a room full of enemies feels great just about every time you do it.

Slo-mo slayer

In Madness/Endless, you play as a warrior who wields a sentient blade as they head into dungeons full of creatures so horrific that meeting their gaze instantly drives you mad. While in these dungeons, your character can only shuffle along the wall, though at any point you can dash across the room, killing anything in your path with your blade.

Your goal is to clear out every room by killing every monster in it, and you must do so quickly, as merely being in the presence of these creatures erodes at a sanity meter displayed at the top of your screen. You can gain this sanity back by killing creatures, particularly through chaining combos of dashes together, which is made manageable through a slo-mo mechanic that allows you change your trajectory mid-dash by tapping and holding on the screen.

Story slog

Madness/Endless has a story, and it's about what you'd expect from something featuring “eldritch monstrosities.” The world is in a dark place, you can save it, but it's hard to tell who to work with because of your mysterious past and the fact that everyone seems bad. There are two possible endings you can reach by the end of Madness/Endless, though if you're like me reaching one of them feels like more than plenty of game to play through.

This is to say Madness/Endless is quite a long game, though gaging length on a game like is also kind of tough to do. You will die and have to retry levels a lot, and the number of times you have to do that will likely be the main determinant of your playtime. On top of that though, Madness/Endless does this strange thing in its story where it starts dropping hints that you're near the end of the game around its midpoint. Even if this doesn't impact the actual length of Madness/Endless, it made the back half of the game feel super dragged out as I was expecting resolution much earlier than I got it.

Retry till rote

The back-half of Madness/Endless doesn't just feel sloggy because you feel like it should be done quicker, it is also a lot harder to complete quickly. As expected, Madness/Endless ramps up its challenges as you get further into the game, but the ways in which it does are sometimes not entirely fun. Late game enemies, stage designs, and bosses all seem to get to a certain level of challenge where your only hope at making it through them it to die a lot while memorizing level layouts and attack patterns.

I get that this is a kind of challenge some folks may want. I am also not opposed to it in theory, but my problem with it in Madness/Endless comes from its somewhat inconsistent control scheme. While it feels amazing to leap and dash between tons of enemies to rack up a combo, sometimes the tap-to-pause and re-target command doesn't work and you run headlong into spikes or some other hazard. This results in a lot more retrying, to the point that the last few levels of the game I basically had to memorize perfectly and even then would still have to retry a few times because of unpredictable control issues.

The bottom line

By the time I finished Madness/Endless, I wasn't interested in playing through its endless mode or exploring an alternative ending. I was satisfied that I had conquered its challenge despite what felt like occasionally faulty controls. I only stuck it out because–when working–Madness/Endless feels like one of the best action titles you can find on mobile.

Source link:https://www.148apps.com/reviews/madnessendless-review/

When I picked up Roller Drama I was not prepared for exactly how dramatic it would be. This game envisions an alternate or futuristic world that is basically ruled by a megacorp, while you and your housemates are just trying to get by. Any yes, before you think I'm talking about a completely different game, your housemates are all part of a roller derby team that you coach. There's an interesting dynamic at play in Roller Dramabetween interactive fiction and sports management sim, but it feels like a game that never fully realizes its potential.

Rolling start

The first tip that Roller Drama is more than just a sports management sim appears when you start a new game. The first thing that happens is you get hit with a content warning about “cat death,” and then said moment involving cat death happens almost immediately. This sets the pace for Roller Drama, which is to say it's a game where a lot of things happen very suddenly and usually before you expect them to.

In any case, these things that can fly up on you include quests like searching for lost roller skates, hiding visitors from your landlord, and more ambitious things that are best left to be discovered as you play through. These moments are broken up with roller derby matches, which play out more like a traditional sports management sim, where you have access to commands to give your team but with the added twists of special powerup cards like bombs that disable defenses and pep talks to juice up your squad between rounds.

Stay on track

Through both the house sequences and the sports competitions, Roller Drama gives the impression that there's a lot of branching paths you can take. But, despite the wide range of dialog choices and league standings that shift after every match, you learn pretty quickly you are on a pretty narrow track to a specific ending. The first time you choose a response to something that isn't in line with Roller Drama's story, time may rewind, or you may simply fail whatever your quest is and be prompted to retry.

Guiding you through these quests is a zombie-like creature from Shakespearean times who provides quippy commentary on your performance and drops hints about how to approach and solve certain scenarios. This creature is the first oddity you see in Roller Drama and certainly isn't the last. I can't emphasize enough how much this game just drops ridiculous things like that into the game as if you already knew about them (hence, why I'm mentioning it again).

Stopping and starting

The abruptness of how Roller Drama builds its world and tells its story never really evens out into a satisfying flow. Just by the time you feel like you have a handle on how to work through both the drama and derby matches, the game ends. You can always go back into the game and see if you can hit certain milestones you didn't in your previous run, but the narrow band of choices makes it feel like the outcomes won't feel all that different.

If you're wondering how this affects the overall game itself, I'd say I'm pretty ambivalent about it. I like the chances the game takes at being weird and not trying very hard to explain itself, and its characters are also charmingly portrayed (though you don't really get a good sense of their personalities). That said, the mechanics of both sets of gameplay segments doesn't feel amazing, and both feel underutilized given the game length and pacing.

The bottom line

Roller Drama is an interesting game to say the least. I kind of enjoyed and definitely respect the way it just drops things on you and expects you to take those things in stride. I wish I could say I enjoyed the actual playing of the experience a little more though, and that it offered some more time in its world before ending.

Source link:https://www.148apps.com/reviews/roller-drama-review/