レビュー

• gamedeal user

  May 12, 2014

  I had high hopes when I bought Merc Kings, I was expecting a Metal Slug/2D platformer. It is very far from that. The concept that drives most of this game is fetching objects/seek and destroy targets. While it doesn't sound bad, the problem is that it uses the same areas while examining every square inch for anything that might get overlooked. The art style and music is great, but the idea of replaying the same areas over and over again for minor accomplishments got old very quick. I enjoy games where grinding is a requirement, but the incentive to continue with Merc Kings seems too far away with no variety in between.
• gamedeal user

  May 29, 2014

  I really want to love this game. I'm a fan of Paul Robertson, action rpgs, and weapon customization. But the game makes it so hard. The very core design of the missions is just dull. Over and over you are given a timer to search a giant maze like map for a randomly placed item or enemy. Because the maps are large, even if you luck out by heading in the right direction it's still going to take you 5 minutes. If you get unlucky it'll take 15 minutes easily, and if you run out of time or die you have to start over. It's like they greatly overestimated how much people enjoyed this, because constant navigation is built into things that don't make sense at all. You spend 10 minutes searching the random boss spawn points to find which one is active, only for the boss to move to another part of the map mid way through the fight. Now you spend another 2-5 minutes finding the new location, rinse and repeat, and hope you don't run out of time. The game actually expects you to wander through each map a hundred times at 10-20 minutes apiece. The weapons you construct have no creativity to them and are just not fun to use. Sure they are creative art-wise, where you can create a toilet gun, but the moment you try to create a shotgun with more than 2 ammo the game cripples the damage so much as to make it useless. The real potentials for creativity (piercing shotgun?) are completely unavailable, because you are forced to create a 100% sniper rifle to select piercing ammo. So you are stuck with a few preset weapon paths, creating incrementally damage increasing versions of the same weapon. The balance of it works against the mission design, because when you are searching aimlessly through a map of endlessly spawning enemies, making it take 3 seconds to dispatch each enemy (from either low damage ouputs or excessive reload times), it just makes the thing a chore. It's highly unlikely that this will be patched either, the devs seem hung up on this idea of a grinding time sink somehow being fun, as similar things were in scott pilgrim too.
• gamedeal user

  Oct 9, 2014

  I'm going to preface this review that this game is by no means perfect, and I have yet to totally finish all of the missions avaiable. That said... This game is very *very* enjoyable. While the difficulty in later missions can be rather stress-inducing, the level of customizaton one can put into their guns allows you to feel like you're working to make your own private arsenal. Borderlands hands you the complete guns, and that's all well and good. Mercenary Kings gives you the pieces and lets you experiment. Do you put the pieces together to create a minigun that fires incendiary AP ammo? A shotgun that fires caustic buck? Or a 3 shot pistol that hits like a freight train with every bullet fired? The choices are up to you. If customization, old school run-and-gun gameplay, and classic difficulty are up your alley, then Mercenary Kings is for you.
• Bandit

  Dec 26, 2022

  Borderlands w/ Metal Slug.
• gamedeal user

  Dec 24, 2014

  When I heard the description "[i]Metal Slug[/i] mixed with [i]Monster Hunter[/i] with [i]Scott Pilgrim vs The World[/i] graphical art style", and the screenshots that complimented it, I bought this immediately. That's my like dream game! How could you go wrong? Well, upon playing the first few missions, I realized it was *nothing* like Metal Slug. Unlike actual run n gun games, where combat is hectic and explosive, enemies are strategically placed and tend to be bullet sponges. Even the boss battles manage to be boring. This, in combination with the sluggish character movement, makes the game-play very slow paced at times. But hey, "two dimensional Monster Hunter with guns" ain't that bad of a description, so does that aspect of the game redeem it? No. The main problem of the game is that [b]you can only use one gun for the entire mission.[/b] This little factor completely changes my opinion of the game; missions can take from ten to thirty minutes to be completed, maps are repeated constantly with different objectives, and enemies are predictable in style. I wouldn't mind these faults, but with only one gun, your customization and freedom can never be unleashed to use different play styles for each long section and thus it gets boring very quickly. You can equip different kind of grenades and melee weapons, but they are far from sustainable to make a difference. It's such a shame, because the game has got a lot going for it. The art style is beautiful, and the smooth animations and characterization add a charm to the game. The music is also very well made, although voice acting is cringeworthy. The crafting system is incredible, in every mission you can pick up materials such as iron or animal skins which can be used to craft weapon upgrades and items, and the gun customization is a great concept that allows you to use revolvers which fire grenades and other ridiculous variables, but it's overall executed poorly since only one damn gun can be used at a time. The main saving grace is the local co-op multiplayer, which is much more fun than playing it alone, but even that can get boring at times. Overall, it's a very pretty game, and can be a worth a try, but overall I can't recommend it. It's such a damn shame, because it has so much going for it, and one of the few indie games I bought at full price (£9) because of its concept, but once you get over the pretty icing, there's not much left of the cake.
• gamedeal user

  Apr 21, 2015

  I like the game but it is kind of a mixed bag. The story was way better then i expected from a game like this and even if you don’t like it the story sequences are easy to skip. The sprite based graphics are very easy on the eye and the animations look right. Gameplay wise it may look like metal slug but it reminds me more of the slow and precise nature of the old mega man games. You can’t take a lot of damage so its all about positioning yourself to easily take out enemies. The locomotion of your character depends on the weight of your equipment, particularly your gun. The weapon system works like this, when you kill enemies they drop items, you use these items to craft gun parts and assemble these into guns. If you assemble enough parts with the same stats you can use special ammo, like shots that bounces all over the place or homing missiles. All parts fit together, i.e. you can combine a shotgun stock with a sniper receiver. Now all guns you build are not guaranteed to work well, most probably won’t, but finding one that does is very rewarding and easily my favorite part of the game. The level design is in general pretty decent. You progress in the game by doing missions, but a lot of missions use the same map. This would not be a problem since there are several kinds of missions and those on the same map are generally different, but crafting gun parts require farming. This can make the repeating levels quite tedious. (mitigate; proficiency: medicine, slot 1: hoarder, slot 2: lucky penny ) The bosses in the game inhabit specific places on the map and maps generally have multiple of those. Once you find a boss the mechanics of the boss battle itself is quite good. Easily the worst design decision in the entire game is that unless you are really fast some bosses disappear mid boss battle and appear at some other spot. If you are to slow finding this spot they might teleport again just as you get there. This can lead to some frustration. (mitigate; slot 1:computer, consumable: shock bombs) The question is whether or not to recommend this game depends on if you like mega man style platforming, farming for materials, experimenting with crafting and can work around a few annoying design decisions. If unsure wait for a sale.
• gamedeal user

  Apr 30, 2015

  I really wanted to like this game. This comes from the people who made Scott Pilgrim vs. The World: The Game, which I loved and looks like it plays like Contra or Metal Slug, which I also love. Well, the graphics are very aesthetically pleasing in animation and both character and background designs. There are actually a lot of really cool looking enemies. The music is quite well done too. The problem is the gameplay. While watching videos it looks as if the game does everything right but the problem is: the game just isn't that fun. The game wants to be an old school run and gun but there's a lot of backtracking (which is even more annoying since the enemies respawn) and you have to reload every five or so seconds if you are run and gunning. The idea to put in a reload system was dumb but they way they did it (a time sensitive system) was actually kind of cool. Though it getting annoying fast. I found myself avoiding enemies so I didn't have to reload and then was wondering why I was still playing this game after avoiding the main game mechanic (shooting).
• gamedeal user

  May 2, 2015

  it was fun at first, but it got really repetitive really fast. the music is catchy, it has a deep crafting system in which you can customize each part of your gun, and the art is BEAUTIFUL. but, it just goes downhill from there. there's one or two maps that you play on for EVERY. SINGLE. MISSION. controls are bad and the grind is bad, the gameplay isn't even enjoyable. i really, really wanted to enjoy this game, especially since i spent $45 on three copies of this game for me and my friends. but i just can't.
• gamedeal user

  May 26, 2015

  The team behind Mercenary Kings are sat in that awkward in-between of not having a cult following from simply existing for a long period of time, like Final Fantasy, and not having the excuse of having never developed a game previously. As such, they're neither excused by rabid fanboys nor by simple naivety. In layman's terms; when they dun goof, no one's in their corner. For example, it's over a year old (two years if you count Early Access) and it's only just been fixed so that it doesn't crash when you talk to an NPC and try online multiplayer. It's a pretty big deal when such a massive component is unavailable. There are typos and syntax errors abound in the game text, something that should've been easy enough to fix in their numerous patches on PC. I do have to give kudos to Tribute's response to the concerns of the completionist demographic; when a kickstart-exclusive achievement made 100%ing the game impossible, they introduced a secondary method of acquiring it. That's gravy in my books. The controls feel a bit like a student's final practical. Need to duck? Nope, there's an item by your feet, you're taking that bullet to the face as the collecting animation immobilises you. Nope, there's a ladder a pixel to your right, you're climbing down now. Need to climb down that ladder? Nope, someone put C4 at the top and your backpack is full! You aren't getting down that ladder until someone picks it up or you make room to pick it up yourself. Furthermore, the game seems to favour the commitment route for control schemes. When you jump, there's very little you can do to influence the path you'll take once you've left the ground. If you're unfortunate enough to try your knife in a pinch, you'll get locked in an uninterruptible cycle if you press it more than once. You'll need to allow plenty of time for the animation lock to finish if you want to so much as turn your character. The graphics are the same as you find in Scott Pilgrim vs. The World. Same people, y'see. The style's consistent and the animations are gorgeous, but it becomes clear that some of the spritework was drawn before they finalised the character designs. For example, Lawless' hat bears the wrong logo in her comm. portrait, and Ryack's expression is far too serious for his actual disposition. I cannot fault the music. It takes a lot of cues from the Sonic games on the Sega Mega Drive (Sonic 2, Sonic Spinball). Gives me dem nostalgia feels. One of the bosses even takes a pointer or two from the first Sonic game. The Steel Soldier, Titan Trooper and their recolours have an annoying habit of not telegraphing where they're jumping, and since you sometimes need to immediately dodge to avoid collision damage, it's a 50/50 chance of rolling in the right direction. Oh, and all bosses and enemies deal way more damage via contact than by their lasers, rockets, bullets and missiles. It's pretty much Hug The Wall: The Game for boss encounters, and Flee In Terror: The Horror Flick should you come into contact with the wildlife. Because you can be killed by rabbits. Guess you're allergic? Bosses randomly teleport to other areas of the map for no reason other than to arbitrarily extend gameplay. If it was purely to pressure the player into rushing the fight before he flees, there wouldn't be a time limit on every mission and its grandma. There are a handful of large maps that get repeatedly used. The enemy placements are (mostly) the exact same between missions. A room or two will open up sometimes, but in the end, you'll have quickly grown tired of the same recycled layouts and textures before you've even beaten the game. In later missions, some of the poorer design decisions become evident. For example, you'll leave a room and see a manhack to your upper-right. It's a perfect 45 degree angle. It'll automatically start descending diagonally towards you. If you jump to shoot it, it'll either be too close and hit you horizontally, stunning you for a second or two, or it'll be too high and it'll start moving horizontally early in response-- their AI is programmed so that they rarely become completely level with your gun if given the time and space. Your movement and jump speeds are decided by how encumbered you are; your gun, your knife, your consumables, things like that (your gun weight is negated if you holster it). It's a really neat idea when it's used exclusively for hiding secrets, but it's not. You have to leap defenselessly if you're too heavy, and the game has a nasty habit of placing enemies in the way of the finish line, and usually there's a threat for not finishing the "jumping puzzle" all in one go. Sometimes you have to do the entire thing again, sometimes it's a pit of spikes you can't get out of easily and will likely die from. The feature's great on paper but difficult to account for in all of their level designs, something evidently too difficult for Tribute. Design-wise, you can't shoot diagonally for two reasons; 1, you'd have to be incredibly precise with your joystick movements (you're not playing this with a keyboard and enjoying it, trust me) so as not to wander and fall. And 2, because each gun sprite would need a second diagonal variation. Remember, Tribute had a limited budget-- something I suspect shows in how some arts assets weren't updated for the final release. Gun customisation goes something like this in later levels: You built a sweet new gun! Does it have armour-piercing? No? Scrap it and take armour piercing so that you don't have to bounce around like a coked-up kangaroo. No, you don't have multiple gun slots while you're out on the field, so unless you have someone to play with, you're not diversifying your calibrations AND beating the missions in any reasonable time. I'll tell you something though-- crafting is so extensive and addictive, enough to make the constant grinding for materials almost worth it. I'd say Mercenary Kings has the making of a fairly memorable game, but it needs severe overhauls to give it the edge it needs. Maybe a bigger budget to allow for experimentation? Maybe a sequel...?
• gamedeal user

  Jun 15, 2015

  When I first saw Mercenary Kings, I became very interested in the game and it looked very exciting to me. The graphics and the gameplay strongly resemble those of the Metal Slug series. There’s the side-scrolling and 2D platforming that old school gamers have appreciated. The plot of Mercenary Kings is about a mercenary who is part of a resistance group that is doing battle with a villainous organization known as The Claw. The narrative quickly becomes irrelevant as you start off in camp and learn to customize your mercenary character. There is no voice acting, so you have to read the dialog text to understand what is really going on. The lack of relevance the narrative has does not bring the game down since gameplay tries to be the strength of the game. Upon playing this game I first realized how awkward the keyboard controls are. There is no mouse to be used in the game, but the keyboard makes the gameplay feel like a drag. I firmly believe that fans of the Metal Slug series would be best advised to use a controller or gamepad to have any fun with this game. Another aspect of the gameplay that feels like a drag is the repetitive nature of the battles with The Claw. You have a limited number of lives and after each death you will have to face the same enemies and this feels quite tedious. Using keyboard controls is difficult when trying to press buttons to shoot, jump, and roll. The graphics are pixelated, but that’s not too bad for a game that’s trying to be an old school, 2D side scroller. If the game had more variety in its levels, the replay value would be exponentially higher. I really wanted to like Mercenary Kings because of its concept of being of resistance fighter battling an organization of villains and the various characters to choose from and customize. Weapons can also be customized so that your mercenary can leave camp for battle with better gear. I can only recommend this game to those with a game controller or gamepad and do not care much about the quality of the narrative. If you’re a gamer who is accustomed to using the keyboard/mouse combination, I would not recommend Mercenary Kings unless you are willing to commit yourself to playing with a game controller or gamepad. I give this game a score of 6/10.