REVIEW : 9 Monkeys of Shaolin (PC)
It’s time to talk about the new game that was released just a month back 9 Monkeys of Shaolin. The is developed and published by Buka Entertainment. The game was released for various platforms like PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, Microsoft Windows, Linux, Macintosh operating systems. It’s an Indie action-adventure game. When it comes to beat them up, clear the area, and move forward games it gets very hard for developers to make their game stand out from the crowd.
What is different in 9 Monkeys of Shaolin from all the other games that follow the same format is that it uses eastern culture and Kung Fu action to make it unique from other games. But even with this, the game cannot grasp the attention of the players around the world. The story of the game is a good old revenge story. The game takes place in China in the 1500s. the player will be playing as “Wei Chang” whose family is killed by a pirate raid in his village. So like any other good revenge story, he sets out on his quest to take revenge from pirates. He trains under a group of monks where he has to master the art of combat and channeling his Chi so that he can stop enemies from killing any more innocent people.
First, the thing that stands about this game is that it uses eastern culture and Kung Fu to give the game a sense of uniqueness. Second, what catches the eye of the players is the aesthetics of the game, the game perfectly creates an ambience that resembles a Kung Fu movie of the ’70s or ’80s, and its music, visuals, and story are working well and go with the theme of the game. Players will find it hard to get intrigued by the plot of the game as it is very little and this is one of the downfalls of the game. As many players like to get invested in the stories of the games that they are playing. On the good side, the entirety of the game is voice acting and unique for small indie titles and each of the voice actors has done a great job helping ad recreating the vibe of old Kung Fu movies.
The game has 25 different levels and each level looks just amazing and you will never know where levels will take you. Some stages are in a castle, some are in the middle of villages, and some are in the middle of bamboo forests, etc. no matter where the levels take you I think you will be amazed by how everything looks. Developers did a great job with the artwork and aesthetics of the game. But this is only valid for the environment and levels the character model is bad and needs a lot of improvement. It’s good that they didn’t go for pixel graphic game, the 2.5d approach that the developers took was a bold move but it didn’t work so well. They could do a lot better with the character model right now it’s very rough. The gameplay system of the game is easy and you will be able to grasp them very quickly however it lacks the depth that the story has bought to the genre leaving many stages unrewarding and players hate this. The combat in this game is pretty straight forward Wei Chang uses a staff to dole out 3 main attacks strike, kicks, and thrust and that’s about it. As you play along you will unlock a few Chi attacks to help you with crowd control. The combat in the game isn’t bad but it’s not good and t can be very slow at times which will frustrate you. The pace at which Wei Chung walks is annoyingly slow and his attacks seem to have slow animations. You will be forced to counter after making 3 hits at an enemy and then this process repeats on and on. The game does have an upgrade system that allows the player to spend the points collected at the end of each stage to upgrade various skills. The upgrade system follows the same old tree concept, now this may sound good but the execution of the system could use some work. Even with the skills upgraded you will not feel very much difference.
REVIEW : Visage (XBOX Series X)
