Arcadegeddon Review: A Roguelite for PS5 for free on PlayStation Plus

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arcadegeddon review
arcadegeddon review

Let’s go to the discovery of Arcadegeddon, the Roguelite of Illfonic available free for PlayStation Plus subscribers in July 2022.

 

After Hades (by the way, here’s our review of Hades), there have been plenty of smaller development teams that have chosen to adopt the Early Access strategy for their roguelikes. In the infinity of productions belonging to the vein we also find Arcadegeddon, which just a year ago arrived exclusively on PC and PlayStation 5, representing the second title in early access on Sony consoles (for the uninitiated, the first was Dreams). After 12 months of content updates and fixes of various kinds, the Illfonic shooter has reached its final stage by broadening its horizons, since the exit from early access also marked its arrival on the Xbox family consoles. and on PlayStation 4.

Over the past few weeks we’ve spent a sea of ​​hours in that nerdy old Uncle Gilly’s arcade, and after seeing pretty much every piece of content Arcadegeddon has to offer, we’re ready to tell you about it in detail.

Let’s go back to the arcade

We are located in Super Citya futuristic city under the grip of a multinational that takes the name of FunFunCo. The latest bulwark against the FFC is uncle Gilly, a chubby software developer who in his arcade gives life to Arcadegeddon, the latest video game available in the city released without first having passed the company’s checks. Not everything will go smoothly, however, since the FFC will be able to sneak into the system with the aim of ending every game and destroying Gilly’s creature.

In short, the narrative premise of Arcadegeddon is not the most elaborate and is more than anything else a pretext for players to continue to get their hands on the special cabinet, which represents the fulcrum of the Illfonic experience. Once the virtual token is inserted in the machine, a game is started between the jerseys of a frantic third-person shooter that cannot properly be defined as roguelike, but which falls more into the category of roguelite because of thecumbersome metagame and of the profoundly different progression from most of the titles belonging to the same genre.

The very structure of a game is atypical, since it is the background to frantic races for the highest score are maps with a fixed and non-procedural design: what is random is the order in which the numerous biomes are faced, the positioning of the many secrets – fundamental for accumulating power-ups and weapons -, the objectives to be completed to continue and the distribution of very few types of enemies.

A similar setting enhances the arcade nature of the Illfonic production and works very well, although the management of the boss fight, a central element in the game economy and which, in fact, decrees the end of a game. During the hilarious games completed alongside a group of developers, they revealed to us that their way of calling an Arcadegeddon run is ‘boss rush’ and the reason for this name is by no means coincidental: just like biomes, bosses don’t have a precise order and are proposed randomly upon reaching a score threshold. With the fourth powerful enemy killed, the player can decide whether to return to the arcade as a winner or potentially continue the game indefinitely.

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While the boss ‘unlock’ mechanic feels good and challenging, as it spurs the player to do their best to enter the fight as soon as possible, we didn’t like the way the difficulty of the last two enemies is artificially pumped up. Regardless of which of the eligible candidates you are facing, they will always get back on their feet after the first defeat and will come back stronger than before. On balance, it is a trivial gimmick designed to simplify the creative process which, alternatively, would have required the creation of multiple versions of the same enemies for each level of challenge.

An atypical roguelite

Also the gameplay of the Illfonic title is overwhelmingly arcade and this can only be a virtue: between double jumps, slides, special powers and a very varied arsenal, the player can indulge himself as he sees fit and advance from phase to phase, building a different build each time. One of the factors that most convinced us of Arcadegeddon is his progression system thanks to which luck only plays a marginal role in the success of a run.

If on the one hand the mods that alter the character’s stats they are random, on the other hand the user is given a certain degree of control over the experience: this happens through a system of increasing the difficulty at the appropriate stations and thanks to the growth of the protagonist and the strengthening of his arsenal.

Around the Gilly room we will meet somewhat bizarre characters whose quests will allow us to accumulate enough experience to unlock active and passive skills with which to alter the capabilities of our Plug (this is the name of the protagonist). The same weapons, with the exception of the special ones, can be unlocked and upgraded, so that in the later stages of Arcadegeddon you can choose whether to start a game with a set of three guns of legendary level and on the highest difficulty level.

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A similar attention to the arcade component certainly does not give up online rankingswhich are not only accessible from the board in the game hub, but also include a nice mechanism that will inspire players to do their best.

The most skilled, in fact, will be marked with a more or less evident crown on their head, so that they can show it off online. In fact, the game supports cooperative and competitive modes, which present important qualitative fluctuations. Playing with friends is a lot of fun, above all due to the possibility of using skills and weapons that allow you to take on a specific role and, for example, provide shields or health to allies. The problem lies mainly in the PvP, it only works in small doses. Between one phase and the other of Arcadegeddon, it is possible to start mini-games in which the challengers must pass classic tests such as deathmatch and king of the hill or take part in activities reminiscent of those of Fall Guys, with platforms to be destroyed to do in so that all opponents fall. Unfortunately, not all challenges work the same way and those that are more detached from the classic mechanics of the game are the most fun. Precisely for the reason mentioned above, the PvP component accessible also from the arcade seemed to us an addition of little interest, since this type of multiplayer works if played with friends and has a completely different flavor with random users.

A few edges to file

Turning to the graphic sector, we have no particular criticisms to make to Arcadegeddon, which opts for a style based on simple models without particular details. Overall, the choice of the developers is a winner and, while not boasting impressive graphics, the Illfonic title is pleasant to see as well as to play. One of the most successful aspects is that relating to character designnever too complex and all distinct from each other: we have the hacker, wrestling wrestlers, astronaut, cybernetic ninja and so on and so forth.

Fortunately, all the costumes worn by NPCs can be unlocked with the related quests in their standard version and then purchased in the additional colors, since the aesthetic element plays a rather important role in the game. The same biomes, albeit with some small exceptions, are sufficiently diversified and well structured, a factor that helps at least in the first hours of the game not to feel the repetitiveness that is an integral part of experiences of this type. The OST is also really nice, whose songs are only partially licensed: a portion of the soundtrack was composed by Charles BrungardtCEO of Illfonic who boasts a past in music (especially in the hip hop and electronic scene) not insignificant.

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Not all that glitters is gold and, sadly, Arcadegeddon also features numerous imperfections that we would not have expected from a product that has spent a year in Early Access.

At present, the game is plagued by more than a few bugs which, while not significantly affecting the experience, are still annoying: the enemies get stuck in the scenario, the slides do not always work as they should and the weapon experience does not it is always calculated with precision. Also the localization in Italian should be revised, due to sentences translated with great carelessness and menu items or dialogues that seem to have escaped the eyes of the translators. As we have already written to you on the occasion of our first test of Arcadegeddon, on PS5 theAMD FidelityFX Super Resolution it works very well, although in the most agitated situations there is some uncertainty of the framerate. We can only say positive words for the way in which the DualSense supportwhich between haptic feedback and adaptive triggers transmits different sensations with the use of each gun.

 

Arcadegeddon
ArcadegeddonVersion Analyzed PlayStation 5Arcadegeddon does not aspire to the replayability of The Binding of Isaac and does not flaunt the productive values ​​of Returnal, but in its small way it succeeds very well in its intent: to create a roguelite characterized by an important arcade component, a fun cooperative mode and a structure different from all. his most distinguished colleagues. Sure, after all this time in Early Access we would have liked a little more refinement, but even with his minor flaws Arcadegeddon manages to entertain hours and hours. In short, anyone who loves the genre should give it a chance, also due to its inclusion in the PlayStation Plus Essential library and its budget price.