I do so love a good roguelite FPS. High-quality action that you can just jump into with all sorts of variety to the levels, weapons, and builds, comes together beautifully when done well. Deadboot takes a solid shot at this while wearing some strong influences on its sleeve, but it lacks the variety that a roguelite needs, while missing the necessary balance along the way.
It’s clear that Deadboot wants to be one of those FPS roguelites about rushing forward and kicking enemies into traps, akin to Post-Void and Mullet Mad Jack. This feels off almost immediately as there’s not a similar amount of pressure. There’s a timer counting down, and toxic gas will enter the area if you take too long, but I never felt like I actually had to rush.
Honestly, this aspect could have been removed entirely, and I wouldn’t have even noticed most of the time. The game has four biomes that you have to do in order, each with a few floors. You can kick foes and knock them away, into walls, or into traps, especially in the first area. There are plenty of spinning saws and grinders in this area to kick foes into, which works decently.
By the time you get to the second area, though, there are fewer traps and the level design gets a lot wider. It’s jarring and makes the level design feel incredibly unfocused. It literally goes from tight corridors to wide spaces, which presents several problems. It’s not uncommon to enter and have ranged enemies shoot you from the opposite side, despite the fact that you might not actually be able to see them.
Sometimes they’ll be behind other enemies or objects, other times they’ll be waiting on the other sides of slopes that will affect their visibility. They can still hit you, of course. Getting hit by these attacks often feels cheap, and the enemy placement and arrangements oftentimes don’t feel correctly balanced at all. This extends to other enemies as well, as it’s not uncommon to run into far too many of one type of enemy in one spot.
This includes the incredibly annoying explosive drones that are meant to function as an enemy and a hazard to explode other enemies with, but the timing to kick them and the range at which they can be hit felt completely off to me. Or maybe you’ll walk into an area and be greeted with four shielded enemies at once, all of which need to be kicked before you can actually attack them.
The kicks in Deadboot simply don’t feel powerful or fun, unfortunately. They feel extra weak, and the way enemies react to them is off. The way you need to kick them multiple times to get them where you want them to go only exacerbates this, as they have issues with collision detection. That’s not it for the melee attacks in the game either.
One of the most unique attributes here is that you can pick up a melee weapon or item that you can hit enemies with or throw at them. These also feel weirdly weak, and I typically only used them when I had to. It doesn’t help that they break so fast, either. All of the attacks just feel strangely weightless and canned, so they really needed another pass.
The shooting doesn’t get off that easily either. It’s okay, depending on the gun, and I do kind of enjoy headshots with the pistol and one of the shotguns, but the majority of the game’s weapons just weren’t at all fun to shoot for me. The grenade launcher is of dubious usefulness (especially in a game where a lot of the enemies charge straight at you), the uzi is too inaccurate to be worthwhile, and the fusion rifle (that shocks foes) just isn’t as good as the pistol or shotguns either. At least the LMG is pretty good, but it shows up far too rarely.
The weapon variety is extremely low too, with only a handful of weapon types. The levels themselves also repeat far too often. On my very first run, I noticed repeated areas showing up more than once. A single room can show up three entire times in just one run of a biome on occasion. As such, Deadboot is easily one of the most repetitive roguelites I’ve ever played.
Every single run feels almost identical, with one of the only major differences being the perks you get. After each floor, you have to wait upwards of ten seconds for an elevator to move you to the next (which ends up eating entire minutes every run). After this, you get to grab a perk and a new weapon (which uses a rank system where higher rank guns have better attachments).
Some of the perks are fine, but the majority aren’t all that interesting, even if you do unlock some cool ones here and there (such as one that turns your arm into a chainsaw). Others, such as a perk that gives you a rocket kick, will get you in serious trouble. It’s just more evidence of various aspects of the game being poorly thought out.
By the time you get halfway through a run, the difficulty spikes massively due to how incredibly chaotic the areas get. It’s honestly too much, plus the enemies often do far too much damage (a single melee attack often takes away 30% of your health), making the difficulty feel horribly unbalanced. There are also rooms where you have to fight three waves of enemies if you accept an extra perk that’s usually not worth it. These are so risky they’re typically not worth doing.
The game is also deeply damaged by the lack of any permanent progression system. Finding currency for permanent upgrades would have made the game’s progression feel far more rewarding. Instead, you just unlock new weapons and perks by hitting certain milestones. It’s certainly not the worst thing, but I definitely think it makes the game considerably less appealing than it would have been.
I appreciate some of what Deadboot is going for, but this is very much a subpar roguelite that needed a lot of extra time in the oven, as well as more variety. Mostly, the action isn’t enjoyable, the variety is poor, and the game simply isn’t balanced. It may be quite cheap, and the gibs and gore are actually quite well done, but this is one roguelite you should probably pass up.
Deadboot: A roguelite that misses the mark far more than it hits, Deadboot should probably have seen a fair bit more polishing before release. – Andrew Farrell
Check out our previous review:
Queen’s Domain PC review — All holds barred |
