Dead Cells is a metroidvania rogue-like with melee swordfighting combat akin to Dark Souls - which is the only metroidvania millennials know and they like it not for the exploration of expansive organic maps, but for being punished over and over by giant bosses. That is to say, they rush through the whole level without paying attention to minor enemies or the ingenious level design just to reach bosses and get their sorry masochistic asses kicked. This is how Dead Cells plays, except for the lack of any ingenious level layout.
It's just an uninspired procedurally-generated level with familiar elements repeated over. You'll die a lot and see these same elements in different order as the maps change. The maps are irrelevant, unlike in true metroidvanias and even in Dark Souls: you can just run in a direction and you'll hardly hit any dead ends or secret passages, more likely the end of the level.
Visually it's beautiful, though I don't understand the need for pixel "art" to somehow try to legitimize this as a game worthy of the classics - hardly any of these millennial games going for the "art" ( or should I say limitation?) of the classics go for the kind of hard gameplay of the oldies. Though this one is harder than usual, probably due to the challenge to rush through the level with little regard to your health and safety. You'll get tons of innocuous upgrades for all your diligent rogue dying. The more upgrades, the longer you can endure rushing through irrelevant level layout filled with ever more of the same simple foes...
Frankly, it feels more like an irrelevant mobile infinite runner than a classic metroidvania. It's sad
Most rogue-likes are sadly like that: just run anywhere and you always get somewhere and it's as pointless as the place before and with the same kind of resources you need as anywhere else. They're really mostly endless runners than anything else, right?
ReplyDeleteA few of these really offer objectives and tantalizing, actual need for thorough exploration that make them standout: like VR space horror Cosmodread and The Persistence and 2D metroidvania-esque Sundered, which is really now my favorite metroidvania ever: it actually very favorably compares to classic Super Metroid static level design with places you can only reach after the right key, or activation of something elsewhere or having the right power for such, but they fill in the overarching main layouts with lots of randomized generated mazes filled with enemies... true gem