A REVIEW COPY OF VERTICAL DROP HEROES HD WAS PROVIDED BY THE PUBLISHER IN EXCHANGE FOR A FAIR AND HONEST REVIEW. NERDOPHILES WAS IN NO WAY COMPENSATED FOR THIS REVIEW. OUR OPINIONS ARE OURS AND OURS ALONE.
Release Date: PS4, Vita: February 14th, 2017
Developer: Nerdook Productions
Publisher: Digerati Distribution
Review Spoilers: N/A
Vertical Drop Heroes HD, a rogue-like platformer, is the latest release (and latest iteration of the title) from the folks over at Digerati and Nerdook Productions. I like the concept of rogue-like games, that difficulty, the skill mastery required, but I also recognize I am absolute garbage at them. And when the gameplay loops, it may only be a few minutes before you find yourself dead on spikes again. It can be discouraging to even try and do it again, let alone beat the entire game!
Vertical Drop Hero navigates this problem by allowing for upgrades to be done in the starting area, more health, more damage, and more XP gains from ‘Pacifist Mode’ (when starting a level, before attacking any opponents you’ll be in Pacifist Mode and can collect orbs that will net you XP and Gold). To further that, as you progress through levels you’ll be able to open up shrines that allow you to start from that advanced stage and advances your hero’s level. After several tries you’ll be able to start right where you left off, even if you’re a bit under-leveled.
You progress through each platformer stage, playing as one of three randomly generated heroes, one of whom is the ‘sequel’ to the last, with the same equipment, abilities, and traits.
Weapons are varied, with each type having a different effect on your character. Some may increase your HP by 33% while your damage is decreased, another may let you dig through the walls of the levels making it easy to avoid fights and shoot right for the bottom.
Abilities range the gamut from a Super Jump all the way to raising the dead or summoning a dragon or dwarf turret. There’s a lot of fun nonsense in the game, and as you pass through level by level, choppin’ up cutesy monsters, rescuing other characters, and collecting treasure all to get to whatever is waiting in the final stage.
It isn’t the deepest, and not the most finely tuned, and it certainly didn’t reinvent the wheel, but I’ll be damned if it isn’t a fun time killer, cruising through a quick five minutes or putting in an hour and grinding away at levels using a character with the wealthy trait to grind up mad gold.
Note: After 10 hours I encountered an error that caused the game to freeze. This happened once more just now while working on this review and the crash corrupted the save data and I lost all the progress. I’m not really sure what to say about that other than it was an unfortunate experience and it really takes the wind outta your sales. Hopefully this glitch gets fixed and no one else experiences a similar fate.
English