Game:

Angels of Death (2016)

Category:

Review

Duration: 29:03

626 views

20

Angels of Death… what a pleasant surprise. I would say that this gameplay definitely takes the top spot so far of all the games I have played for New Release Friday. I have still to this point only played episode one of this game, but found the story truly enthralling, the writing to be artfully crafted, and the characters to be very filled out just like the world in which they live. Overall, I totally recommend Angels of Death to anyone who might be interested in this type of gameplay that revolves more around story-telling and character development than interaction or a display of skill.

Before we take on the Angels of Death: Episode 1 Gameplay & Review headlong, let’s waste some time by talking about this series like I always do: what the fuck is NRF? New Release Friday is a series in which (hopefully) every week I will hop over to the “New Releases” section of Steam and pick-up a game to play for a few hours and give a first-thought review on. This series is an attempt to not only keep content fresh and relevant around the channel by covering current games in a concise and genuine fashion, but also to offer exposure to new games via a relaxed review format to inform potential, unsure buyers. Check out the playlist for more!

Initially, Angels of Death grabbed my attention because it seemed kind of edgy and like it might take itself way too seriously and thus would probably be funny to play. After first starting it up I was a little put off by the lack of proper resolution or graphics options, but was still more than willing to give Angels of Death a chance beyond this small oversight. Then we got into game and found out that the controls were an absolute mess and that I couldn’t rebind or use a controller… I was starting to lose my patience and was about ready to give a pretty bad review for the game based on this stuff alone. Of course, I know the rules of New Release Friday and knew that I had to press on with the gameplay & review to be fair to not only the viewers (yeah, you little shits) and to the game.

The control bindings are pretty bad on their own, but the way they translate into Angels of Death is even worse. It’s almost as though Rachel walks too far for a single press of the key and it makes it really difficult to precisely place her in a doorway or down a hallway. When you have to haul ass and run from something, it quickly becomes very frustrating when you just can’t get your character to do what you want. Luckily, Angels of Death’s gameplay doesn’t have a whole lot of these types of sequences (so far) and I think that the game really benefits from that fact. You spend a lot of time exploring and puzzle-solving at your own pace, which makes it easy to review the characters and interactions you come across before you encounter them again.

The soundtrack of Angels of Death is honestly pretty sick. It has a very classic anime feel to it, but they overlay a modern EDM twist on most of the tracks that really ups the ante and honestly make the tracks feel a bit more emotional. I would normally never associate dubstep with emotion, but somehow it works well for this game. Sound design in general is quite good in Angels of Death; you can usually hear most things that are relevant to what is going on. There are some sound bites that were entirely too loud, like the computer beeps at the beginning, but they were short-lived and weren’t so invasive that I had to rip off my headset or anything.

Now, the strongest aspect of Angels of Death is 100% the characters. The game makes you want to play more to find out exactly what is going to become of the characters and the strange relationships that have developed. The writing is superbly well done I think and paces well with the animation to ensure that the proper emotions are portrayed from the character in a game that would otherwise leave it up to interpretation because of the lack of voice actors. I really think that Angels of Death benefits from only being written and not acted though; because of the way it is written, you can often sense the emotion or lack thereof coming from Ray. You can feel the anger and snark that Zack is giving whenever he speaks. I don’t play a lot of games that lack voicing and whenever I watch anime I only watch dubs, so it is surprising that I find a game like Angels of Death to be so great.

I am not sure that I will be continuing Angels of Death on my channel. Part of me wants to, but then the other part of me realizes that it may not be the best content because of the lack of voicing. There are a lot of dull moments it seems, even just in between wording and phrases, but I feel bad cutting a lot of it out because of the emotion that is portrayed and the amount of gameplay that would be missed with some of the necessary cuts. Hopefully you dug this episode of New Release Friday featuring Angels of Death: Episode 1 Gameplay & Review regardless.

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