Barbarian Brawl
Review
An Empty Arena
by Quinn Levandoski
reviewed on PC
Presentation Blunders and Funny Physics
The game’s presentation left me quite wanting. It goes for a cell shaded look, but, with a few exceptions (the walls, for some reason, look fantastic), the graphic fidelity isn’t high enough to pull it off. At best it looks like a PS2 game, and the animations are wonky to match. I’m not sure if it’s the fault of imprecise animations or faulty hit detection coding, but telling when you’ll make contact with something is a guessing game. In a game based on hitting people and narrowly avoiding deadly hazards, that’s not good. I’d also have liked to have seen more than one map, if for no other reasons than not having to look at the same thing ad nauseum. Functionally it works for a game like this, but the same brown and tan village gets old fast. Hell, don’t even change the actual layout if you don’t want to, just allow for a day and night version or something. Anything. I don’t want to see it anymore. Couple this with the same song playing over, and over, and over, and over, every single match, every single moment, and you’ve got yourself a pretty uninviting place to play.
The only thing I really liked about the presentation, and I’m going to give them the benefit of the doubt and assume that it was intentionally done for comedy, is that the physics are absolutely horrible. If you touch, and I mean even graze, the torso or weapon of a fallen barbarian that’s laying on the ground, it will go flying across the map. That’s actually where I found other characters to be most of the time. I’d look for things flying into the air. Blood works similarly. The blood animation is possibly the worst I’ve ever seen (it looks like bubbles fizzing in a pop bottle), but it keeps going on way too long to the point where it’s funny and shoots off in every direction evenly like a slow motion firework, ignoring gravity and everything else. Normally this would all be pretty annoying, but given everything else with this game it’s good for a few chuckles.
You Were Supposed the be the Chosen One
To be completely honest, it can sometimes feel a bit cathartic to write a review of a really bad game. It can feel good to flex your vocabulary to really paint a picture of how bad something is. This isn’t one of those times because I really wanted to like the game. I like the concept. I like a lot of the ideas. From what I’ve read on Steam and elsewhere the developers seem like legitimately good people who want to interact with the community and make a game people can just have fun with. Unfortunately, none of that matters when the game turns out to be, plain and simple, boring. A combination of simple gameplay options, a completely dead community days after release, and infuriatingly repetitive visuals and audio make this a game not worth your time or money.
3.5
fun score
Pros
The concept is cool, the price is low, and the physics make for some funny moments.
Cons
The game is largely lacking, boring and repetitive, and, even if it wasn’t, there’s nobody online to play the game with.
