Deadcore Review - Too Fast

I want to ask you to do something: Use your imagination. Think of a cross between Portal, Mirror’s Edge and just about any half decent platformer. A wonderful thought, isn’t it? This is what I, maybe with just a little too much optimism, thought of when I first looked at DeadCore. Now I would say imagine a cross between Mirror’s Edge, Super Meat Boy, a sprinkling of Portal and getting your hand stuck in a wood chipper.

This is to say that it’s hard. Hard as in I literally hurt my hand, punching my desk, after the myriad of times at attempting almost any of the prohibitively difficult sections that require you to beat more multiple criteria in such a strict time limit that while eventually beating said section brings a sense of relief or elation, the time before that is nothing but torture.

Allow me to expand. Deadcore is a single player first-person puzzle-platformer with shooting elements and a wide variety of puzzle elements that revolve around certain jumps and activating switches that alter the path of the world, allowing you to advance - should you be able to figure out what to activate and which, specific, jumps to make. Now considering it’s a very linear game, having to break flow to figure out how in the hell you go forward is not the best of signs.

The events take place on some obscure floating and broken tower above a maelstrom, but I also think that somehow it’s all taking place inside a computer simulation due to how death is dealt with random red sparks, not to mention the fact that there are floating collectibles that just look like something from Tron. I’m not quite sure what’s going on, because the story is only ever revealed through the hidden collectibles, and I only collected a handful and at best only three of them were in order. Other collectibles you’ll find around give you more powers (double jump for example), extra ammo for your switchgun or unlock music tracks.

How the confusion comes about is purely as a result of one of the later-introducted puzzle elements, gravity fields. You shoot a switch on the wall with your gun and a purple field is introduced. This purple field creates a new floor of gravity, the floor not having any indication until you jump in the field which can already confuse. Jump into one of these and the camera could be doing somersaults leaving you so disoriented that the ensuing time-limit of the activated gravity field runs out and leaves you hurtling to your death.

Sometimes the confusion isn’t even as a result of disorientation. There are timed events that quite literally give you half a second leeway and unless you perform eveything absolutely perfectly, that’s a failure. It can honestly feel like something has been missed but you then realise that having activated one of the checkpoints, shown as ringed green circles, there is no way to backtrack as the giant red net that kills you if you fall has now moved up, blocking the path you just came up by.

Speaking of red nets. Most of the puzzles are later littered with laser fences that you have to time your run by, or use a later acquired air-dash, to zip through mid-jump. The problem with these sections is the same one I find with almost every first-person game that requires you to squeeze through tight areas or jump on small ledges - you don’t know where your hitbox ends. I can’t count the number of times I was certain that I was in the middle of the gap in a laser-avoidance-jump but no, some portion of the character nicked it and thus came death.

All of this makes the game feel like it has both excellent and shoddy level design at the exact same time. The pieces all fit together but the core underlying factor of time, be it the time limit put on triggered elements or even the speed at which some platforms move, is out of sync and makes things unecessarily difficult. Beyond this, I often, eventually, in my numerous attempts to pass certain points found a way to utterly skip challenges by having the game fling me into an area I shouldn’t be able to get to, and these were events I was able to recreate.

Of course it’s easy to state that the speed and difficulty is what the game is about, it’s sold as a difficult speed-running platformer and time is highlighted through two key methods. The first is that the switchgun (the only weapon you have which activates certain parts of the levels, from opening doors to activating gravity fields, and it also deactivates enemies) is on a constant timer that is right there for you to see, from beginning to end.

The second is the music, a techno-mix that is never intrusive, but sets the beat in the background and then increases in tempo should you slow down.

What makes it all the more a shame is that the speed the game wants you to rush at detracts from the best aspect, the utterly brilliant visuals. The tower, both looking up and down at the path you’ve come and where you’re headed, is really a sight to see - and you can see everything due to exceptionally long draw-distance. Taking a break to admire the visuals and, again, the design of some of the levels really was the best aspect of DeadCore for me.

All of this may have just aroused the part of your brain that thinks you’ve finally found another platformer to put you through the ringer, you masochistic git. I can honestly imagine people loving DeadCore, I really can, but I will never come to terms with a game that makes me personally think that my deaths and failings are as a result of a heightened artificial difficulty, not my own ham-handedness.

Do I recommend DeadCore? Oddly enough I do. It’s certainly not the game for me, I like my difficult games to be in the same vein of Demon’s Souls, not DeadCore. Without a shadow of a doubt I can say that those who like a challenging platformer with a sprinkling of puzzle will find something to enjoy here. While not without its flaws, it’s more than worth the low asking price of £7.99/€9.99/$9.99.