Part 12 - Intro Screens and Final Thoughts
Gameplay: I think the video above is a really good indicator of Revolution 60 as a game. I mean, it is a game, and it is on an iPad. It does game things - it has a ton of stupid logos to hide assets being loaded, it is has a loading screen every 10 minutes as new set pieces are introduced, there are characters that can be controlled and a story you can watch.
But nothing is done WELL. Take the video above - what you're not seeing it me tap-tap-tapping the screen as the splash logos appear. Eventually my tapping causes the videos to stop, but it doesn't skip them. As with all the talk of mechanics take what I say with a grain of salt - but I believe the game either has 20 seconds of start time hard coded in (a very common theme in this game) while forgetting to disable video skipping, or the game has to spend time loading the barely animated start screen but still neglects to restrict you from "skipping" the logos. It's asinine!
I suppose the absolute nicest thing I can say about the gameplay is in more competent hands it would be mediocre. Having delayed gestures on a touch-operated tablet is just fucking inexcusable, and the combat would have been fine if it stayed that way for the first couple levels only.
Story: Well there was one. Here's my long-winded breakdown:
- Chinese Terrorist All-Male All-Star Clone Team take over a space station
- Chessboard secret agents, working with space station engineer, are sent to steal a Chinese space ship and dock with the station.
- One of the senior operatives takes a grenade to the face and instantly dies, only to be resurrected as a SlaveBot.
- The Mission Commander has sNRI resistance which is never explained how she has it, why it's only occurring now, and what it actually does.
- Amelia is working on the side with someone - maybe Centre/The Pentagon, maybe an unknown entity.
- A Chessboard Shard was "corrupted" and went insane by having to do her goddamn job. Instead of all the humans that maintain Chessboard removing the shard and smashing it with a mallet, it was instead inserted into a Weapons-Grade Geishabot and physically stored on the exact weapons platform with the exact Core that this now-corrupt AI would need to take over everything, up to and maybe including the world.
- This Shard used electric magic to double-corrupt The Commander, who is now brainwashed and evil
- Amelia is kidnapped because she is the only person who could unlock the Core for a corruptable AI OR for the very terrorists who have taken over the ship. No one in the entire US Government, Military, or Special Operations system thought that physically bringing her on this mission might not be a good idea.
- Holiday is forced to kill her best friend (who stopped being a zombie because boots to the head cure amnesia), and had to be talked in to it, despite me spending the entire game being the biggest asshole in the world to her and mocking her injuries, near dear, and performance.
- 10 minutes of bullets and bombs didn't even dent a GeishaBot, but a single sword thrust turns her in to a lunatic who suddenly gibbers about the thing Brianna Wu probably was researching so she could bore her henpicked husband with the knowledge of geometric names.
- The most incompetent Holiday in the world fucks up saving the engineer that had The Code in her head - the same engineer that not more than 20 minutes earlier was being threatened to be killed. The very same engineer I might add that Crimson could have injected with nanites the absolute SECOND she was kidnapped. This unflappable, amazingly perfect AI could have conquered the entire ship before Holiday had even beaten up that Bruiser for the 3rd time.
- Even though Minuete was both insane and corrupt, and even though following her orders are what get you "professional" ranks, Brianna considers Amelia and Rogue WORSE options. The worst option according to the developer is to try and help the government shut down their fucking system so it isn't taken over by the Chinese or a rogue AI system hellbent on destruction
- Holiday is murdered at the end by an Amelia who gets corrupted by the corrupt AI, proving that she could have ended the whole thing the second they docked had Crimson not been cray-cray.
Final Thought: The gameplay was boring and laggy. The story was uninspired and full of holes, while the dialog fluctuated between mediocre to cringe-worthy. The entire bonus screen of the game, by the way, was links to Brianna Wu's various social media accounts and buttons to buy her fucking book. All this talk of sequels, and rich worlds, and engaging story, and female-centric gaming is so blatantly pandering it's unbelievable.
I believe Brianna Wu loves video games. I believe she plays them a lot, and she likes to talk about them and think about them. She's probably living out some kind of dream, except she's still a kid and never grew up. She's an 11 year old with a mental disorder that was given a couple hundred thousand and a famous husband with connections. And what we got was a game as filtered through the lens of a talentless crazy person. She's kind of to gaming what Wesley Willis is to music, or Ed Wood to movies.
8/10
It's alright
(I'm working on a special surprise for you guys because of her goddamn book shilling)
((this is the spergiest thing I've ever written))