Game:

Crypt of the Serpent King (2015)

Category:

Review

Duration: 7:27

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3

Crypt of the Serpent King, despite its low price, is not worth purchasing under any circumstance. This steam asset flip dumpster fire of a videogame somehow managed a console release, assumedly via a back-alley drug deal with or violent extortion of Microsoft executives.
Despite having only seven levels and a two-hours length. Crypt of the Serpent King manages to be a grueling experience. This is largely because of the combat system or lack there-of; the vast majority of enemies in the game have a single attack which loops endlessly. Upon learning the basic rhythm of an enemy’s attack, there being one enemy type per level and as just established a single attack animation per enemy, you have essentially already won the entire section. That’s just when you can even be bothered to fight enemies, as its substantially more viable, faster, and enjoyable even, to simply strafe jump around them. This is if you’re not just luring enemies to the game’s many death pits from which you can kill hordes of unity asset store monsters from an unassailable distance. Of course, you are often spared this rather minor effort as seemingly endless foes will simply commit mass suicide when faced with the existential threat of… the easily jumped gap. Notably, there is one moderately difficult level in the game… The second one. {shrug picture over graph} In this level there are enemies, or enemy rather, with multiple different attacks, making the combat somewhat more interesting and substantially more difficult. In addition to this, the level lacks any death pits at all, disallowing exploitation of the special needs AI. Despite these improvements, this level revealed to me the laziest aspect of Crypt of the Serpent King, an aspect which cemented it to me as a crash grab rather than a humble passion project. Beyond attack noises, enemies make no sound whatso ever. No footsteps, no growling, no speech… nothing, so you can get surprised ganked and instantly die as can be seen in this clip. In a good medieval fantasy game, such as The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, enemies constantly make callouts which prevents them from getting an unfair advantage through inadvertent stealth. Another game, Rainbow Six Vegas, similarly uses these callouts to great effect, preventing unfair deaths and accommodating the innately restrictive first-person perspective. Enemies in Crypt of the Serpent King meanwhile are apparently world class assassins personally trained by Corvo Attano and Ezio Auditore. This is not to say they are in any way challenging or interesting to fight, they are simply incredibly difficult to detect if you’re already engaging in a fight with another enemy. The laziness and ineptitude of not including something as basic footstep sounds is simply astounding.

-Newkah


LINKS:

CHANNEL:
https://www.youtube.com/c/NewkahNetwerk/

NEXUSMODS:
https://www.nexusmods.com/newvegas/us...

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