BLOODROOTS
Letting your fists do the talking and painting the town red
There’s only one question you need to worry about with Mr Wolf and it isn’t “What’s the time?” Left for dead by his fellow Blood Beasts, your holophrastic hero is on a Western-style quest for revenge. Taking the form of a top down violence-’emup, á la Hotline Miami, you’ll die, die, and die again perfecting the best breakneck route through each stage.
A three-act structure filled with zany battle arenas stands between your big bad wolf and the answer to his most pressing question. Mr Wolf’s former comrades don’t care much for his singlemindedness or his refusal to stay dead, but they also don’t let that stop them from villainously monologuing like there’s no tomorrow. Thanks to brilliantly bananas character design and each boss’ comically self-absorbed personality, you’ll look forward to each showdown. However, the path to your next face-off is filled with more hapless goons than you can shake a carrot – or whatever else isn’t nailed down – at.
Rather than overpopulating levels with enemies for a cheap shot at challenge (looking at you, God’s Trigger), Bloodroots proves there’s no substitute for good design. What sets it apart, though, is how far it takes the improvised armoury angle. From garden warfare with root vegetables to a memorable fish-based takedown, combat is decidedly slapstick. Enemies, too, are more interesting than your stereotypical ‘Put’em up’ punks. Before long you’ll be taking note of who gives chase, who keeps their distance, and how you can use every behavioural wrinkle to your deadly advantage. Weapons have no more than three uses in them and, at their best, levels have a delightful laying-downthe-track-for-the-runawaytrain-you’ve-found-yourselfstrapped-to-the-front-of momentum. Even as the blood flows, the action has a wacky, cartoon violence feel.
BEWAREWOLF
A number of blades alter your movement and put extra pep in your step, and each area grades how well you cut your path through it (you’re given the option to retry immediately for a better score). Mixing and matching weapons, figuring out how to kill two guards with the funky vase you just picked up, almost never gets old.
Checkpointing eases the pain of dying over and over, putting you back on track for that perfect run, and is mostly generous – even boss fights have mid-bust-up bookmarks. But we say ‘mostly’ as, if you die after killing the last enemy in an area but before moving on, you’ll be sent back to the beginning of that stretch, and it’s never not brutal. It’s rare but every time it happens, it exposes the not-quite-there platforming; the fixed, zoomedout perspective makes it tricky to judge some jumps and leads to our doom more than once. For a title so tightly designed elsewhere, it’s an odd oversight.
VERDICT
“WHAT SETS IT APART IS HOW FAR IT TAKES THE IMPROVISED ARMOURY ANGLE.”
This violence-’em-up’s improvised armoury delivers frenetic fights that makes you feel like your favourite action movie scrapper. A bloody great time. Jess Kinghorn