Abaddon: Retribution
Developer: Firestorm Studios
Genre: Shooter
Available On: XBLIG
Co-Op Mode: Local (2 players); Online and System Link (up to 8 players)
Price: 80 MS Points ($1)
Demo w/ Co-Op Available: Yes
Every now and then, you play a game that makes you stop and say, “man, so much about this experience is right, but it just falls short.” Abaddon: Retribution as a whole doesn’t fit into that category, yet its co-op modes do tend to lean a bit heavily in that particular direction.
Abaddon: Retribution is actually a sequel to another Xbox Indie game, Abaddon, which was released in January of last year. Just 8 months later, Abaddon: Retribution was released and provided some tweaks and additions to the game. Set in the distant future, an alien race has been encroaching upon human space and basically doing all the things alien races do in these types of games, i.e., attacking human vessels, looking different than us, and playing the “I’m not touching you” game with our borders/space stations. Well, enough is enough and it’s time to show these aliens that we will not tolerate their near proximity anymore!
Gameplay-wise, Abaddon: Retribution is something of an interesting mash-up between a twin-stick shooter, and a tower defense game. As you progress through the campaign, your main ship, the Abaddon, goes with you – as it’s honking big and it’s got the honking big firepower to back it up: just the kind of support you need when you’re a little spacecraft with just a few lasers/missiles to wipe out vast alien armadas. Of course, despite its firepower, it still needs some protection from all those enemy ships. So you act as the first line of defense against your foes while at the same time collecting the material they drop so you can repair the Abaddon (for a fee that steadily increases each time you do so), upgrade it’s turrets, and/or upgrade your own ship. If, at this point, your mind starts wandering to an early/mid-90s space sim that pitted you against a race of cat people, you would not be the only one.
A picture's worth a thousand words so here's a bajillion words for what the action in this game looks like
At any rate, when co-op comes into play, you might think that your partner is able to fly his own ship, make his own upgrades, and so on. However, your thinking, which only moments ago was pure brilliance, has sadly lead you down a false path. The entire campaign is limited to just two players, locally, with one player controlling the ship while the other fires the guns. To some degree, this makes sense, as having multiple players in the campaign – each with the ability to upgrade their ships/the Abaddon – would mean some time spent in pause menus “waiting for players”. Yet the one aspect that’s a little mindboggling about it all, is that there are some ships that do not support co-op at all as the guns can only be fired by the first player. In other words, if you want to play around with all of the ships and weapons in the game, you can’t do it with a friend. As some measure of pittance for this faux pas, there are a couple of co-op modes that support multiple players, such as Survival and Assault, so at the very least Abaddon: Retribution does make for a pretty entertaining co-op couples game. (Essentially, 4 different Xbox systems may connect, with 2 local partners on each system for a total of 8 players)
It’s hard to deny Abaddon: Retribution has a few shortcomings when it comes to the co-op department. However, the gameplay elements do make up for some of those shortcomings, and, let’s be honest, some of our fondest co-op memories are those moments when one person’s driving, and the other person’s manning the guns…
Wrap-Up
Abaddon: Retribution is For: Twin-stick shooter and tower defense fans; some mild RPG elements are at play as well with the ship upgrade system
The Co-Op Experience: One player steers the ship and activates its special abilities, while the second player mans the guns and shoots anything that moves (and probably some things that don’t); multiplayer modes allow for multiple ships at once
The Hearts of Men
Developer: Coltran Studios
Genre: Classics
Available On: XBLIG
Co-Op Mode: Local (up to 4 players) [Note: Online play is purportedly coming]
Price: 80 MS Points ($1)
Demo w/ Co-Op Available: Yes
Only four magical words are needed to describe, sum up, and sell The Hearts of Men to an entire audience of gamers that grew up with the Nintendo and arcade machines: “Wizard needs food badly.” For everyone that just rushed off to pick-up this great Indie title, enjoy! For everyone that’s still around, let me explain.
When I first began playing video games, and co-op games in particular, the very first one that I remember was a game that has seen a few different renditions over the year, none of which live up to the original. I am referring to Gauntlet, a game that was solely built around having you and your friends rush from dungeon after dungeon (100 total) as quickly as possible so you could grab some “Sacred Orb” and beat the game. It was, by today’s standards, frustrating, pointless, and utterly fantastic. The Hearts of Men doesn’t quite live up to that same standard/bar that was set by its progenitor, but it does a very good job of capturing that essence.
You start things off by choosing one of four characters: a warrior, an elf, a warlock, or a Viking. Which you end up selecting affects how quickly you attack, the strength of these attacks, and what your special ability (triggered by collecting special potions) does. Each level of The Hearts of Men essentially boils down to fighting your way through some amount of baddies, finding keys to find to unlock the next section, picking up special potions to help clear the way, and, every now and then, taking on a boss. You also only have 300 health with which to make it from the beginning to the exit, and this slowly ticks away as time progresses or disappears in large chunks when hit by a foe, so speed is of the essence. The game offers up two different difficulty modes: casual for newcomers, and classic for old-school fans. There is a noticeable difference in enemies and how quickly your health ticks away, so Gauntlet-ites should feel a warm nostalgia feeling when they “boot” the game up.
That warlock is angry and ready to team up to take down some baddies!
While you can play through The Hearts of Men all by your lonesome, a game like this is really geared towards a co-op session. Bringing along a few more buddies to help you go through and complete everything truly invokes that sensation of sitting around an arcade machine trying to get as far as possible purely for bragging rights. There are no high scores or some seemingly unreachable level to push for on a quarter, but there is still that feeling of camaraderie to keep going and make it to the end when you’ve only got 25 health left and a swarm of monsters in front of you. The two elements that were added that both make co-op better, but also a little worse, is the inclusion of potions that restore the health of the entire team as well as the ability to revive fallen teammates. While this is certainly a good thing for enhancing the co-op experience, I miss the days of running ahead of another character to steal the food away from him or her…
The Hearts of Men may not provide the same endurance challenge that Gauntlet did, but it absolutely provides that same feeling of nostalgia that has been missing from so many other iterations and clones over the years. With a $1 price tag, too, it’s hard to pass this one up.
Wrap-Up
The Hearts of Men is Geared Towards: Gauntlet and old-school hack-n-slash dungeon crawler fans
The Co-Op Experience: Team up with up to four friends to make it through dungeon after dungeon in an attempt to clear all 11 levels and claim victory before your health runs out