I am an admitted hack n' slash addict. Carving up peons with massive attack chains and running around with an insatiable bloodlust while wielding weapons of cartoonishly preposterous proportions is my absolute favorite gaming past time. Dynasty Warriors, God of War, Ninety-Nine Nights and Devil May Cry have all sapped countless hours of my life away as I crushed villages, cities, countries, orcs, hell spawn, historical figures and various ancient deities. So when I played the Colosseum demo, I was pretty stoked. The game had lots of brutal-looking weapons, killer combos and amusing, satirical writing (both in cutscenes and item descriptions) such as, (paraphrased) Bad guys: “Why did you come to the Rainy Fields?” Hero: “Honestly, there weren't a lot of levels to choose from.” Everything seemed so perfect about this game... so I decided to plow through the full version.
Colosseum continued to impress me as I flipped through the sleekly-designed menus. I paused for a moment to weigh my weapon customization options: 'should I dual-wield swords, grab that mighty hammer, or go classic with a sword and shield?' Finally, I chose 'none of the above', grabbed a giant spear and gleefully named my new character “kaygee” after my favorite Samurai Warriors wisecracking mercenary. I was ready to paint the town red with the blood of the wicked.
Next, I breezed through the quick tutorial as I got acclimated to the game's unique control scheme. Unlike every other hack n' slash, button-mash title I've ever played, the attacks had been moved from the comfort of the A/B/X/Y buttons to the axes of the right thumbstick. It is an unorthodox layout that I don't really care for, since it makes remembering combos (directions instead of buttons/colors) and entering the correct attack commands (thumbstick is less precise that actual buttons) a bit cumbersome, as well as taking away your manual camera control. Similarly, the “Rage” powers that you build up to perform special skills are mapped to the previously lamented A/B/X/Y buttons, instead of their more natural place on the D-pad (like God of War's magic or Dante's styles in Devil May Cry 4). If nothing else, it would have been nice to customize the controls a bit. But this is just a minor complaint.
Everything was going fine until I encountered the major flaw in this game in the 2nd wave of Dark Swamp – the fucking flippy witch bitch. This enemy embodies everything that's is irritating about enemies with long-range projectile attacks in Colosseum. You will always find them standing on the opposite side of the arena lobbing an unyielding flurry of electric orbs/flaming boulders/etc. in your general direction as you attempt to fight off the 4 bad guys in front of you who are hounding the hero relentlessly. The projectiles also pass right through the enemies and blast you as you are trying to fend off the nearby baddies with your melee attacks. Combine this already obnoxious general characteristic with the fucking flippy witch bitch's ability to teleport, and you'll find yourself running laps around the arena trying desperately to defeat her 1-2 hits at a time, since she constantly teleports away in the middle of your combos.
As if that weren't enough already, enemy attacks will still land and damage your character, even if you hit them squarely as they're flying through mid-air (I'm looking at you, Rainy Fields ninja chicks). Between the flying projectiles assaulting you from all over the screen and the cheap-landing attacks in front of you, you'll find it quite easy to get cornered as 4 or 5 bad guys hammer away at you while you try desperately to dodge away to safety. If you try to repel them with a nicely chained-combo, one of them will invariably hit you with a cheap shot to bust your move, even if you were just bashing his skull in.
It's really a shame that this game has such glaring flaws in the A.I.'s attacks, because the rest of this game is so nicely polished. The visual style, especially the environments and the customization art assets, are probably better than most games that are made with a higher budget and a much larger production team. The humorous quips throughout the game really give it an endearing personality. I didn't have a friend lying around to try it out, but the versus mode also has some solid potential. Even the credits showcase a pretty sweet rock tune called “This is... Colosseum”.
It really pains me to do this, but unless you like pulling out your hair and weaving it into a little flippy witch bitch voodoo doll that you stab feverishly until you reach the frayed ends of sanity, I'd advise you not to enter the Colosseum.
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I agree with both of you, the dark swamp shooter can be a pain in the *rse, but overall I love how you can use the yellow & red powers to bounce the projectiles. The cost to use a bounce power is only 1 "flower", and since u bounce it back into another enemy you usually get atleast 50% of the cost back, not to mention that you will be able to continue your combos. Its really great when u get 2 projectiles for the price of one, try the ice map on hard and use the fireballs against the other melee enemies until they stop spawning, hilarious!
addygameze, I also prefer the yellow since it will bounce, the red will more pull the projectile, however if theres an enemy netween yourself and the projectile the red will pull the projectile and the enemy toward you, the projectile will hit the enemy and your attack will do even more damage!
savamizz, you can play against bots in multiplayer games, they will not use projectiles; altough I actually prefer the projectiles; I like how you attack, dodge, push, continue combo... always staying in motion since the combos are not aborted by rage powers or defensive tricks.
I just wish they had a rage power that allowed you as a player to shoot projectiles... Imagine a game against a friend or 2 where you bounce eachothers projectiles against each other, would be so cool!
Well, the shield stuff is all well and good, but you have limited use of those special attacks, which you only earn by chaining combos together, so it doesn't really seem like the greatest overall strategy if you want to use your other specials to attack or heal.
This is a huge pet peeve of mine in a number of brawlers- especially this one where you don't have any real ranged attack. I don't mind some projectiles that give variety to the gameplay and make you emply some real strategy, but these guys are the very definition of the phrase 'goddamned bats'.
i experienced exactly the same problems with the goo throwing dudes at every map until i learnt that timing the yellow shield (y-button) well will bounce back projectiles at the shooter. after this it got kinda cool, especially since you can direct your bounce back at other enemies by spinning the projectiles. you can use the red power as well (b-button), but this is kinda difficult imo.
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