Deadly Tower of Monsters Review

Brace yourselves for...

In short, it's an early sci-fi movie turned into a video game and presented as the recording of DVD commentary by the director. The director, of course, is not the brightest bulb so a lot of what he's saying is funny in it's ridiculousness. I never really watched many of those early sci-fi movies so I suspect fans of that genre will appreciate this game even more.

The gameplay itself is relatively simple yet fun. You'll be climbing a tower and fighting monsters (some of which will attack from below to "remind the viewer they are climbing a tower") dodging traps, and finding secrets to help power up your weapons. This is livened up a bit by creating a lot of excuses for you to jump off the impossibly high tower. You avoid becoming a greasy stain on the rocks below by engaging the air teleport to return to where you leapt from, or your jetpack to land safely.

One of the highlights of the game is the expansive bestiary, which includes almost every type of monster from sci-fi movies. The monsters themselves are lovingly rendered in an appropriate style for the genre. Most of the dinosaurs are reproduced as stop motion claymation,including the visible choppiness inherent to the technique. Later in the game there are monsters that are very clearly two men in a horse-like costume with the added touch that you need to hit both "actors" to kill the monster. This kind of silly referentialism permeates the game and defines its charm.

To deal with such an extended bestiary you might expect a lot of weapons... and you'd be right! Starting off with a simple space baton and pointy stick, you end up with such sci-fi staples as lightsabers and black hole generators. Every weapon is upgradeable to produce even more damage. That said, a lot of the weapons aren't that useful outside of a single battle or two. Some, such as the frog gun that shoots flies, sound fun but are largely ineffective.

As the game progresses you build a team of three characters, starting with the hero Dick Starspeed (and yes, the director comments on other possible names.)Scarlett and Dick's co-pilot Robot eventually join the crew. Each character is differentiated by their powers. Dick can place land mines, Robot has chain lightning and a time slowing device, while Scarlett can run fast. Each of these skills are used to progress specific obstacles and open a couple bonus areas but other than that the characters aren't differentiated very much.

Despite a few minor drawbacks it's one of the most fun games I've played in a long time. In fact I've run through the game three times in the last week, which brings me to its biggest drawback: The lack of a New Game+ mode. It would be great to run through the tower again with full upgrades and slightly stronger or more numerous monsters, but your only option is to start a completely new game.