TERRORHYTHM (TRRT) – PC (P)Review

TERRORHYTHM (TRRT) – PC (P)Review
K3W3L
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Genre: Action, Early Access, Indie, Rhythm
Developer: EvilCoGames
Publisher: EvilCoGames
Release Date: Apr 6, 2018
Edited by CrimsonMomongaSSS

NOTE: This review was written based on version v0.2.1805 of the game, and is a reflection of the game’s state at that time.

One Finger Death Punch (OFDP) is a rather unique game in the beat ’em up scene. It has a simple two button fighting system where you press a button to attack an enemy within your range. You’d think that a game like that would have some sort of beat or pattern to it, but that’s not the case; it’s all about reaction time and pressing buttons at just the right moment, with no real rhythm rhyme or reason to the timing.

That’s where TERRORHYTHM (TRRT) comes in. With a name that’s a bit finicky to spell right, this game is a rhythmic beat ’em up developed by Russian game studio Evil Corporation Games (EvilCoGames).

The first thing to note is that the game is in Early Access, which somewhat excuses the lack of polish. I honestly thought my audio was broken when I first loaded up the game and was greeted by a total lack of sound in the menu. Audio only plays once you select a song and start the round; I would have greatly preferred to be able to hear a preview of the songs in the menu to get a taste of them before committing to one. Menu transitions are non-existent so far, as everything just instantly blinks to the next screen. You have to calibrate the game when first loading it up, you can’t manually set an audio offset (which I feel is an oversight in a rhythm-based game), and VSync doesn’t reliably cap the frame rate, all of which muddles the experience.

The lack of polish extends to the controls. I can’t tell if this is just a problem with my controller or what, but, when you switch the input device to the controller, the cursor becomes incredibly sensitive and almost impossible to control. Actually, why does the game only allow you to use one device at a time in the first place? Plenty of other games afford you the option to use both a controller and mouse simultaneously.

The tutorial is pretty easy to understand. Much like in OFDP, you press the arrow keys when an enemy is within range. Also like in OFDP, some enemies will come bearing nifty weapons that can handle a few hits. Unlike OFDP, however, you can only act on the beats of the song (on the lower difficulties, you can also act on off-beats). You can press left or right to attack an enemy in that direction if it’s in range, you can press down to increase your attack range, or you can press up to strengthen your next attack.

As of this writing, there are only 18 levels in the campaign. There doesn’t seem to be any semblance of a plot, however, so these feel more like independent stages than a connected campaign. The more you play, the more you rank up; it’s not immediately apparent, but you actually need to reach the higher ranks in order to unlock later levels in the campaign. The levels do a good job of gradually introducing new enemies, which means you won’t get overwhelmed with too many new things at once. There’s a decent variety of enemies as well: normal enemies, beefy enemies that require 2 hits, and jumping enemies, to name a few. The BPMs of the songs also gradually increase as you progress through the campaign.

Inexplicably, the game does not display your best score for each difficulty on each level. You only ever see a score if you play well enough to appear on the leaderboard, making casual competition and comparison with Steam friends pretty much impossible.

The combat feels great for the most part. The rhythm engine (built in Unity) seems reasonably forgiving of slightly late or early hits, and it’s really satisfying to chain together attacks, charge-ups, and range expansions. On the highest difficulty, you’re faced with a lot of enemies and need to combo very precisely if you want to get the best scores. At the moment, the difficulty feels like it scales pretty well, and there is always the option to revert back to a lower difficulty. Aesthetically, the scenery and visuals are bright and vibrant, but the enemies look rather one-dimensional and overly similar in design.

I was most excited for the custom-song aspect of the game. As a fan of rhythm games like AudioSurf and Melody’s Escape, I’ve always wanted to put my own library of songs into a game and play levels that are generated based on those tracks. I can’t say I’m entirely pleased with the current implementation, though. Instead of displaying the file path, it should pull any ID3 tags from the MP3 file, failing which it should just use the file name. Displaying the whole path is problematic because the spinning circle that indicates that the game is actually processing your song gets pushed out of view. For that matter, why use an uninformative spinning circle as opposed to a progress bar?

There’s also the matter of longer songs simply taking way too long to process. 4-minute songs (think The Game by DragonForce) already take 5 to 10 minutes to generate a level; a song in excess of 7 minutes (Here Comes Revenge by Metallica) takes much longer, at least 20 minutes, which borders on sleep-inducing (or at least inspires productivity elsewhere)!

The worst part about this is that you have to re–generate the levels every time you load a custom song. Take Here Comes Revenge from above as an example again. I had mistakenly set the song on the hardest difficulty (Terror) and died rapidly, but I wasn’t able to just change the difficulty and retry. Oh no. I had to wait for the game to generate THE WHOLE LEVEL AGAIN.

I’m not certain whether the game can handle songs with variable BPM, either. As an example, Dystopia by Megadeth, which has a pronounced BPM change in the middle, never felt particularly enjoyable to play. I’m not even sure if the developers have considered songs of that nature, or are planning to account for them in any way.  Either way, there is still much room for improvement with this game.

Pros:

  • Familiar, yet fresh, gameplay
  • Game engine is competent
  • Various difficulty settings, including a no-fail difficulty
  • Ability to use your own songs…

Cons:

  • …but your songs have to have a constant BPM to really be playable
  • Game does not store previously-played custom songs
  • Long custom songs take way too long to process
  • Lacking in polish; slow transitions

Your mileage may vary:

  • The game openly warns against playing it if you suffer from epilepsy

With a current price of $19.99 USD on Steam, the game’s Early Access blurb on the store page states that the devs “do not plan to raise the price…but it may change”. Since it’s still in Early Access, I won’t actually score it yet, but I want to point out that, for the current price, you are getting a rather unpolished game. If you love OFDP, have a good sense of rhythm, and are willing to look past the rough exterior, you’ll probably enjoy this game; if not, I would advise waiting until this is further along in development before considering it — ESPECIALLY with regards to the custom song generator.