I beat Will Glow the Wisp, but on top of not being that good, there’s not much to say about it. Not only are controls momentum-based, but your character is constantly being dragged downward (it’s so bad, I thought my controller was malfunctioning, but no; there’s even an achievement for staying still). Then the level design starts getting cheap: the boss of world 2 has hazard walls by its weak points that’ll chase you when you kill the weak point, and you can barely outrun them. Plus, I lost count of how often homing shots are placed near the end of a seemingly-empty corridor, some of them even requiring not only foreknowledge, but also precision movements to get around them. The final boss also teleports to random spots in the arena (offscreen), so on top of everything else, there’s a lot of just wandering around looking for it.

So yeah, I just decided to wait until I beat the next game in my backlog to make a post:

• Tower 57
  

  5 hours playtime

  8 of 29 achievements

This is a twin-stick shooter. Left stick moves, right stick aims, RT shoots, LT uses your subweapon, A is your typical examine button, X uses your special power, RB swaps your equipped weapon, Y displays the map, B lets you swap the character you’re playing as, and LB dashes.

Note: unlike other games, you can’t dash through enemies or projectiles (and there’s a 1-second cooldown); you might think the devs would’ve worked around this, but no, the game regularly spawns enemy swarms around you, causing you to get trapped when they close in. You might think you’re supposed to shoot an opening before that happens, but all guns in this game use ammo, which you can run out of. The only gun with unlimited ammo has a very slow rate of fire, and many of the other guns that DO use ammo ALSO aren’t fast enough to cut through the swarms (including ones that certain characters start with). The game does have a brief preview of the characters in the character select screen at the start of the game, but it only shows the characters’ special moves (not their guns or subweapon), and it doesn’t even do a good job of that since you won’t be able to tell that the Spy’s special only stuns enemies instead of damages them like the Dom’s or the Diplomat’s special. You can’t even test out their equipment quickly since there’s a weapon-free tutorial before the first level.

Plus, even if you do have a fast-firing weapon, you’ll need to buy it the piercing upgrade so it can hit all the enemies in a row. Yup, the game also has RPG-mechanics, and it’s worse because of it. On top of the aforementioned swarms (which I swear are only excused because of the weapon upgrades), there are a few times where you have to take damage by going through poisonous water to progress, and you aren’t allowed to buy the item that prevents water damage until after the first time it happens. Also, since the first time it happens is in the first level, you’ll only barely have enough for said item, meaning if you buy anything else, you won’t have enough. Worse, the game has much more mandatory poison water in level 2 (including during the level’s boss), and unlike Fatal Stormer, you can’t go back to the hub/shops once you start a level (the game even auto-saves when you start a level). After that, though? Only happens one more time, in level 5.

Level design is also lackluster. The trailers might make you think it’s a linear run ‘n’ gun like Guerilla War, but not only do the levels have a lot of branching, dead end paths, but enemies only spawn when the room you’re in goes into lockdown, like a beat ‘em up. It also isn’t uncommon for there to be multiple waves of enemies per room. I wouldn’t mind this so much if the game had more varied level design, but most of the time, it’s either an open arena or a thin hall, and a bunch of the enemy waves are just swarms of little red bots that chase you and surround/trap you if you don’t have a strong/fast enough weapon (so on top of being cheap, it’s also somewhat repetitive).

The swarms aren’t the only way the game is cheap, though. There’s an enemy type that’s a white, circular robot that’s invulnerable in ball mode, which it stays in for a few seconds before abruptly charging at you (no foreshadow animation or sound effect) and being vulnerable for a bit before its pattern loops. That’s bad enough, but there are multiple times where you’re surrounded by them, effectively giving you no way to avoid damage unless you get lucky and dodge at the right time (assuming they actually dash at the same time like they’re supposed to, instead of randomly getting delayed). Level 5 introduces a teleporting enemy, and if it teleports on top of you, you just get stuck, constantly take damage.

The worst example of a cheap hit is the boss of level 4: the first phase isn’t too bad once you realize the blue lines between the boss and its fists don’t actually hurt you, but during its second phase, it has an attack where it just stays still for a few seconds, then abruptly bolts above you and fires a laser downward that instakills you (in a game where enemies’ hp is based around you only taking a sliver of 1/4 hp damage per attack). Even if you dash as soon as you notice the attack happen, you’ll still take a huge amount of damage due to lack of i-frames (anywhere between 1/2 to 7/8 of your hp gone, assuming it doesn’t just kill you anyway), and the boss is able to do this attack at least 3 times before you can kill its weak points (they also go invulnerable during certain attacks).

Not recommended.

P.S. There were even a couple times I got stuck on scenery and couldn’t get unstuck; I had to quit/restart. All the other times I got stuck on scenery, I somehow managed to get out after a bit (not sure how, though).