Hero Siege
Windows, OS X,
Developer: Elias Vigilione, Jussi Kukkonen
Background
Hero Siege is a hack n’ slash style game in which the player controls one of the player classes such as a Nomad, Redneck and Fallen Paladin. Developed by Elias Vigilione and Jussi Kukkonen, Hero Siege released on January 29, 2014 to Steam after being ported from a mobile game on iPhone and Android, and it is a game in which you must survive wave after wave of oncoming enemies in order to move onto the next stage. Different heroes for the different types of gamers.
Gameplay
Incredibly slow and frustrating, I have more than a few issues with the way the gameplay alienates the players of this game. First of all, the amount of time it takes to progress from one level to the next, when playing you will find yourself wondering how much longer am I going to be here and for those of you who need and answer, the magic number is 30. You must survive 30 waves of enemies just to make it to the next level. This wouldn’t be an issue if the combat seemed to have eny life in it. Instead you are stuck running around a landscape that is poorly animated, and while doing are getting caught on things that were hiding from your view such as an entire tree that for some reason likes to be transparent. The combat as a whole is incredibly aggravating as the variation of enemies makes no sense.
Among the hordes of monsters you will fight you will come across stronger enemies that will be a different color. These enemies will have extra abilities such as being able to jump at you or fling a giant mace your way, unfortunately the only way of telling what they can do is by a secondary title next to their name which is easy to lose track of amongst the many monsters. Whats worse is that the titles are very irrelevant to what they can do. I once fought a giant “enraged” rat, with only that to go on I had no idea what to expect so keeping my distance I fought him until I found out that “enraged” is another word for “can jump.” I also found out that “juggernaut” means “can fling a giant metal ball of spikes at you.” To say that the gameplay of this game aggravates me is an understatement.
Characters
The best part about this game is the non-conventional character classes that the player can control. Certain classes are more unorthodox than others such as the Redneck class which has you running around swinging a chainsaw and flinging burning oil and molotovs. There is also the Nomad who attacks using his scimitar and throwing swords and causing sandstorms. the game also features more normal classes such as the Archer who attacks at long range with a much weaker attack who is very mobile and controls the field. I do have a discrepancy with the way this game was portrayed. While watching the trailer for the game I saw that the game features a Samurai character class which I was super excited to play. It was only after purchasing the game I found out that the Samurai class was not included in the game. He was only available through the purchase of The Karp of Doom DLC. While it may not be that much of a big deal, it was incredibly annoying to find out the character I was hoping to play is not included in the game.
Relics & Equipment
when playing the game you will frequently come across many items. These items can be either relics or equipment. Relics are items you find in the level that are active for as long as you stay alive. They don’t require activation and can have either a passive effect on your stats or add some sort of new function that will help you in your attacks.
Equipment however, are your standard pieces of armor that a player finds throughout the levels and they provide stat modifiers the same way most games do. For these bonuses to take effect you will need to equip them to the corresponding armor slot. There are shields, boots and gloves all which can be stacked to augment your health, attack and defense. Change them as you will to combat all the game throws your way.
Verdict: 3/10
I have to be honest, for my own sake and credibility. I do not like this game, at all and I tried to give this game every opportunity to shine. Boring repetitive and slow gameplay, a sloppy user interface, a very uninspired and unmotivating story. I found myself playign with the volume off because the sounds were truly annoying and obnoxious. I found the pacing of this game to atrocious, I played for 2 hours in one sitting and wasn’t even sure if what I was doing even mattered. This game recieves points from the cool, unconventional characters that the player can play as and the large amout of relics you can collect in the levels to augment your abilities, and while it has an average replay value, replay value means very little when you don’t want to replay it. I was lucky and bought this game on sale for $1.50 as opposed to its normal retail price of $5.99. Honestly if I didn’t get the game on sale I would be much more distressed with the way this game worked out and I wouldn’t recommend this to anyone. Save your wallet for a game thats a better use of your time and money.
