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Slain: Back from Hell Review


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5a28239434441_Slainlogo.thumb.jpeg.78da7ee43d8c80b871550b17feb9820a.jpegAfter a rocky initial launch last year, Slain: Back from Hell from developers Andrew Gilmour and Thomas Jenns and publisher Digerati Distribution was, much like its protagonist, given a new life when significant overhauls patched up the gameplay for a more rounded and enjoyable experience. However, it wasn't a complete 180 in terms of quality. Despite some significant improvements Slain: Back from Hell on the Switch eShop still seems hellbent on trying the player's patience, with only meager rewards in return. Extra challenging, old school game design can be fun when handled well, but when it turns into a repetitive slog you end up with a game like this.
 
In terms of story, visual design, and music, Slain takes all of its cues from heavy metal. You play as Bathoryn, a fallen warrior who is brought back to life in order to fight the evil Vroll and his minions of death. You travel through forsaken landscapes battling witches, wolves, and skeletal warriors—the art design in this game is like a metal album come to life, and put through a pixel filter. The writing isn't exactly top notch as the characters talk in overly dramatic, stilted sentences and ultimately the game ends with a confusing cliffhanger clearly meant to set up another game, but the graphics are pretty fantastic. Slain puts pixel art to great use, creating vivid, bloody landscapes with just the right touches. And the music is, naturally, one heart pounding metal song after another. It's the perfect soundtrack to pump you up while you battle waves of undead monsters inside a bloody castle littered with bones. The rest of the game may have some significant problems but the presentation at least is both unique and wonderfully realized.
 
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Slain's pixel art design is a little more advanced than the kind of stuff you'd see on the NES, but the gameplay feels right out of that era. This is classic 2D action game fare—sidescrolling environments, some platformer elements, waves of enemies, etc. Slain also retains many of the annoying quirks of those old school games, like knockback on hit, precise platforming despite meager movement controls, stiff combat, and one hit kills. You're going to die in Slain. A lot. But the truly frustrating thing is that, unlike other games where you may die repeatedly but still feel compelled to keep trying, Slain's appeal fizzles out pretty quickly.
 
The main problem here is how stiff and ultimately unsatisfying the combat is. You swing your sword pretty slowly and it doesn't have much range so it can easily by interrupted by enemy attacks. You have to time your strikes carefully, especially when there are multiple enemies around and you can easily end up being juggled by their attacks. It's not necessarily such a bad structure on its own since it's meant to force you to be careful, but in Slain you have so few combat options and even basic enemies can take several attacks to bring down, so pretty much every encounter with an enemy devolves into a super repetitive game of waiting for the enemy to attack and then counterattacking. Action games don't necessarily have to have flashy, elaborate attacks to be appealing but there should at least be some sense of fluidity to the combat. Enemies that attack from a distance are even worse since your only ranged attack—magic bolts—are extremely limited and also not very powerful, so you often have to slowly approach, jumping over or reflecting enemy projectiles.
 
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At the very least, Slain doesn't leave you completely defenseless. You can dodge, though it's pretty short and only backwards. You can block, but you'll still take some chip damage (and there's no option to increase your health throughout the game). You can also perfect block, and this is essentially your go-to move for just about every enemy encounter. When you time you block just right you'll execute a perfect block, take no damage, and the enemy is open to a counterattack. It can be tricky to time it right and admittedly it's satisfying to do, but no so much the thousandth time you do it. Slain is in dire need of more viable combat options, especially something to deal with aerial enemies, since perfect blocking isn't all that useful on these highly mobile targets. A better designed combat system would even make the high frequency of instant death traps more tolerable (though in the one concession the game gives to the player there are frequent checkpoints, so you'll restart relatively nearby).
 
Slain isn't actually that long of a game. If you were somehow able to complete it without constantly dying and retrying, it would really only be a couple hours long. As it is you'll probably spend at least six hours with the game to finish it, though again this heavily depends on your skill with old school action-platforming. And once you finally reach the end and watch the credits roll, there isn't anything left to do in the game. No difficulty options, no replay incentives—the only reason to even try to explore the game's linear levels is to find all five pieces of a special talisman which makes you a little stronger for the final boss fight. Not that I was eager to jump back into the game immediately after completing it, but still, the game is quite short.
 
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Slain: Back from Hell may be an improvement over its initial release, but it still has some serious problems with the core structure of the gameplay, which ultimately pigeonholes the player into repetitive attacks against enemy after enemy. A game can be super challenging but still satisfying. Slain is super challenging, but the tactics you need to use to get through the game are just not fun. Oftentimes it feels like sheer persistence rather than skill, which makes each victory less of a satisfying accomplishment and more like a trial you were forced to sit through. Slain manages to capture the extra difficult style of old school action games but fails to deliver it in an engaging way.
 
Rating: 5 out of 10 Headbanging Skeletons
 
Review copy provided by publisher
 

Slain: Back from Hell will be available on the Switch eShop on 12/7 for $19.99.

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