Review dead cells12/20/2023 ![]() ![]() Unlike some of the games in this genre where necessary upgrades halt your progress until you get them, I found that I could easily get right up to the areas towards the end just with a really good weapon combo. ![]() Fortunately there isn’t much backtracking if you didn’t take the wrong path, as there are fairly frequent portals that allow you to move around the map. Each rune requires you to get the one before it and things stop being fun quickly when you’re going through every area with a fine tooth comb, hoping you took the right path. I eventually caved in and looked up how to get the other runes. The others aren’t so easy and the game won’t tell you where they are either. One allowed me to make climbable vines grow at select spots, and the other unlocks daily challenges. The first two I found easy to stumble across. To get the most out of the game you’ll want to find the progression runes that will give you access to more areas and rewards. And that’s one of the things that stood out to me, even when the odds seem stacked against you it’s not a foregone conclusion, and with the moveset and muscle memory hammered into you from the very beginning you can still go far. Even when you get off to a bad start it never feels so insurmountable that you just give up. But when the game throws crappy weapon after crappy weapon at you, it feels like you accidentally stumbled into Masochist Simulator 2019 as you try and make do. When you come across a great combination of weapons and traps, it can feel like everything is going your way. Most of the time it was more items, cells and gold which I likely could’ve gotten during the run if I didn’t just wildly speed through the previous section.ĭue to the randomised nature of the areas and the weapons, you never know what kind of run is in store. Timed doors that appear through your runs even push you to move fast if you want to see what rewards lay beyond. As a result of this kinetic game style, most areas don’t take long to get through when you’re pushing towards the next resting point. The game is at its most fun when you’re gracefully moving through these dark and foreboding castle fragments, exploding skeletons into a shower of gold and jewels. It never got boring dodge-rolling up to a group of monsters and messing up their day, making short work of them with a barrage of blades and arrows and maybe the odd Ice grenade. To start off with Dead Cells feels great to control, there’s a real fluidity to the movement and the way everything can chain together that is just fun. A combination of random starting weapons and unlocked Sandals had me stuck running around alternating between a slow kick and arrows. In some cases (*cough* Spartan Sandals *cough*), unlocking some blueprints turned out to be to my own detriment. Most upgrades and item unlocks require a fair amount of cells, so it’s usually several runs before you can get the benefits. At first, it’s getting the basics, like an upgradable health flask or being able to hold onto some of your gold in your next run. If you can get to the end of a biome/area, you get to keep your blueprints and spend the ‘cells’ you’ve built up on things that can carry over between runs through the ever-changing kingdom. It always sucks when you lose your precious haul due to permadeath, but all hope is not lost. The blob finds another headless corpse in the prison depths and you start again. The catch is when you die you lose it all. ![]() You’ll also come across stat boosting scrolls, pick up blueprints, and from some enemies, you’ll also get ‘cells’. ![]() As you explore and kill, you’ll get money as well as new weapons and throwable items/traps. Initially, you start off each time with a choice between a sword, a bow and a shield, and then you’re off and killing monsters. Why are you doing all this? There are tantalising glimpses into the lore when you stumble across an area with examinable spots, but this not what the game is about, it’s all about ‘the run’. While sounding like an unfortunate mishmash of genres piled into a heap, the game is much better than the description implies.ĭead Cells has you playing as a blob-like entity that hijacks a headless prisoner’s body, taking up arms (weapons, you still have your arms attached) and cutting a bloody path through the many monsters that can quickly turn you back into a plain headless corpse again. It is also known as a ‘rogue-like’ or ‘rogue-lite’, that draws inspiration from games like Metroid and Castlevania, as well as more recent games like Rogue Legacy and Dark Souls. Dead Cells first and foremost is a side-scrolling platformer with a heap of combat. Finally leaving its ‘Early Access’ stage on the PC (it’s about time!) we get to play Dead Cells on the Switch. ![]()
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