Teardown

Teardown

AGGRESSION
[SPOILERS] A total, comprehensive review of AGGRESSION
Instead of crudely reducing the mod's content rating to mere numbers, I'll try to give a more thorough evaluation.


STORY

I like the direction the story had, but it utlimately couldn't find a balance between the comedy and the more serious parts. Reducing the lore to logs that the person we're hunting down was a waste of a golden opportunity; just taking some sheltering npcs or non-infected robots and having them basically act as hype-men for the antagonist would have been enough. Instead, the Brass Mask was never built up, and falls apart like a house of cards.

The voice overs weren't terrible, but the way all the information you get is filtered through them was immersion breaking.


GUNPLAY

There was no gun progression, and the gun selection itself was paltry in both size and quality. The hunting rifle was the only worthwhile gun to use, as it's short reloads and high damage made it much better where everything else either does almost no damage or takes way too long to reload to have fun in high-speed combat. Reducing it to one was honestly the worst part, as it meant experimentation and hotswapping was impossible.

I wish the power fist was an ability instead of a weapon as it could have lead to more interesting game mechanics reliant on it's ability to turn whatever you're standing on into a torpedo-- and by extension, you --at a moment's notice. Particularly, I wish enemies were more vulnerable to physics damage, as it would make launching statues at them more fun. Really, the physics engine wasn't effectively exploited here.


LEVEL (and enemy) DESIGN

Surprisingly, the spherical enemies remained the most interesting and difficult to fight through the entire mod, for the following reasons:
  • The white explosive-vulnerable infected were easy to just get to kill themselves by leaping into explosive barrels, or with the five explosives you have on hand at all times.
  • Turrets are easy to cheese in various ways; from going beneath them to just shooting their platforms if you can't find the weakpoint.
  • Even the red ones with crystals on their back have the exact same durability as the whites when it comes to explosions.
So in the end, playing keep away with the comparably dynamic spheres was more interesting, and yet you could easily snipe them in open spaces due to their short aggro range, so in the end they aren't without fault either.

The Level design, however, killed me almost as often as the spheres did. A destructible environment lends itself to a previously safe spot to become a pitfall. I once had a turret shoot a mine next to me by accident, and back to the respawn beacon I went.

The detail of the environment myself, however, was rather incredible. I found myself just staring at some of these pieces for a while, in the interims between fights, appreciating the amount of time and dedication some of these areas recieved. Some spots were a little repetitive, but for the most part, it was my favorite part of the mod.


BOSSES

Unfortunately, for as above, so below. Literally not a single one of the bossfights was fun. Each and every boss proved to be inane slogs impossible to accomplish in any reasonable amount of time without infinite lives, which was rather disappointing.

This can be blamed on a few factors.
  1. Instant kills only, for the most part. Even dark souls often at least allows moments enough to commit mistakes to memory. In this mod, you die so fast it's hard to analyze what even killed you, or how.
  2. The mechanics of these fights only ever amounted to weakpoints. That's it. There were dozens of ways to take advantage of Teardown's mechanics to build interesting boss mechanics, but it was only ever running and gunning. The most there was happened to be a cage that the first or second boss trapped you in that you had to button mash to escape from.
  3. The mobility afforded to you with your dodges and double jumps is rarely enough to dodge attacks, even ones you see coming. It takes a lot of luck and a lot of rote memorization to get through phases intact, given how long the cooldown on the dodge is, and how short the extra jump is.


CONCLUSION

So, that's my review. What could have been done to improve the mod? Well, first of all, the guns should have had more work put into them. More guns, less downtime reloading, and unlocking more should be done via exploration of the levels. The power fist should have had more of a role in the level, enemy, and boss design, given how conceptually fun it is to use. Extra dodges should be earnable via the same means, along with higher double jumps. Bosses should do less damage and have more erratic behavior. Ultrakill is an excellent example to take from. The physics engine could have been taken advantage of a lot more in the design of them. Enemies could have better placement, and perhaps just spawn in at points rather than ramming into walls trying to get to you. Their design prevented any ambushes from ever occurring.
Last edited by Textual Deviant; 8 Nov, 2024 @ 6:36pm