The gameplay is easy enough to understand. You have a mech suit that lets you take on enemies, but must occasionally exit to interact with the environment. It is a good formula and have been done well several times before, but Deathchron feels like the level design is set up to frustrate you more than give a fun experience. For instance, outside the mech suit, you move very sluggisly and it feels like an artificial challenge more than creating any tension, which is what the game should have aimed for.
Deathchron has good points, don’t get me wrong. I love the action in the game and it does feel as challenging in that regard as a throwback game should be. The bosses especially are fun to deal with because they are extremely creative encounters and pack one heck of a punch. The music and visuals are well made and create a good looking game, but while it looks good, there are other problems that just feel unaddressed and end up bringing the experience down.
These problems include the artificial difficulty from how the screen scrolls, which waits till you are at the edge. This can lead to situations where you head straight into an enemy attack or an obstacle/platform placement that throws you off, and you do not have time to react and deal with it. Add to that, while the difficulty is at a level you would expect from a classic game like the kind Deathcron pays tribute to, Deathcron feels a bit too old school with how it handled its checkpoints. They are often too far apart and as a result, you will end up needing to redo massive sections again to get back to where you were.
It is not a bad thing to wear your influences on your sleeve like this, especially if you are a fan of old-school games. But making a game old-school to this extent can limit your audience by removing the aspects that gamers have come to expect to make things more manageable. It does not have to be one or the other either, as a separate mode that recaptures the old-school feel perfectly can be a very good selling point in a game. In Deathcron, the old-school nature ends up feeling like it makes the game too repetitive for its own good, which can be frustrating.
I wanted to like Deathcron and I think it has a lot of good aspects as I said before. I just feel it is trying too hard to be like the classics and not bringing in gameplay tweaks that would make it work better now. Ultimately it is up to you to decide if it is a good thing, because there is an audience for this, but I am not it.
Disclaimer: A review key was provided
