From ACE Team, the guys behind Rock of Ages and Abyss
Odyssey, comes The Deadly Tower of Monsters, a top-down shooter based on a
fictional 1970’s sci-fi film of the same name.
The premise is, the game is in fact the DVD release of the
film which in turn features an audio commentary by the ‘director’, giving
insight and often hilarious behind the scenes stories as you fight your way up
and around the aforementioned tower. The game starts with a suitably low budget sequence
involving your character’s spaceship being shot down and crashing on an alien
world, from that point you take control of Dick Starspeed who is portrayed by
in-universe actor Jonathon Digby, and proceed to investigate your temporary new
home whilst fending off stuntmen in cheap costumes, animatronic robots and Ray
Harryhausen-style stop-motion dinosaurs, everything is made to look cheap and
of the time it’s supposed to set in, right down to the visual effects and the
option of an old film reel-style filter over your gameplay view. During your journey you meet Scarlet Nova, brave heroine and
emperor’s daughter who asks for your help to bring down her father’s tyrannical
reign, you also gain a further controllable ally in Dick’s trusty companion
simply titled “Robot”, each character features the same controls and weapons
but as you play they acquire new special abilities, Dick can place landmines to
halt his attackers, Scarlet can perform a super-sprint to run extra fast whilst
Robot can create a time-slowing vortex in order to gain the upper hand over
enemies or slow down obstacles you need to get past. As you progress higher and higher up the tower newer and
stronger enemies appear, luckily along the way you find better and more powerful
weapons as well as collecting currency and scrap metal which allows you to
upgrade existing items in your arsenal, and at various points your health,
damage, and ability cooldown can be tweaked to improve your chances of survival.
It isn’t a difficult title, though at times you may find
yourself a little overwhelmed by enemies but activate a special ability and
crack your laser whip and you’ll soon be ok, failing that just pray your last
checkpoint wasn’t too far away, if you do find yourself dying the director
complains about it being the wrong reel of film he’s watching and failing to
understand why he would shoot that particular scene anyway, little elements
like that bridge the gap between interactive adventure and movie as well as adding
to the overall humour of the game. Graphically, Deadly Tower of Monsters won’t win any prizes
but the attention to detail on making everything look and feel low budget is
great, flying objects wobble on their clearly visible strings, the supposed
stop-motion monsters all move with an authentic judder, and the acting is so
bad and clichéd you’d think you were watching an Adam Sandler film.
The one thing I did notice though is despite the supposed
low budget of the film, the locations and contraptions encountered around the
tower actually look surprisingly good for what is meant to be something made on
the cheap in the 1970’s, it doesn’t detract from the game at all but simply
came to mind when I set out writing this. I feel like this game should start with the Mystery Science
Theater 3000 theme tune, the way the game is made to look and feel is genuine
classic B-movie territory and the commentary is very funny at times, it’s a
homage to days gone by, movies that were so bad they were good, rubber monsters,
cheesy special effects, and there’s even a trophy for finding all the apes
wearing watches, a tribute to that most classic of movie gaffes. You won’t find anything new or ground-breaking
in DToM but like the hundreds of films it takes its inspiration from it’s not
out to do that, like the films it’s there to entertain and tell a story, and it
manages that completely.
The Deadly Tower of Monsters is out now on PS4 & Steam