Justin tries to apply FPS skills from the 90's to survive longer in Devil Daggers than the previous round. Death comes quickly and often, but beating friends is worth the pain.

Previous Devil Daggers Experience

  • Watched video trailers
  • Heard one podcast conversation with initial impressions of the game
  • I played a couple of rounds to test out sound levels for recording

Initial Expectations, Hopes, Dreams, Fears

  • I mainly came here to have Quake flashbacks
  • I expect to die an awful lot
  • It will have cool, hellish enemies, and chunky explosions
  • No idea what to expect around weapon types, skills, or game structure / progression
  • I'm not sure if this will be fun or just beat me to hell
  • I hope it's addicting and something I can get my friends to play, too

What actually happened

I hit a wall pretty quickly with Devil Daggers. It was amazing to me how little progress I was able to make as I had a good run early on, but struggled to get much further. Once I succeeded in topping my best time, I didn't actually feel like I had gotten any better. I was left with the impression that I was missing some sort of basic skill to break through a bit.

I did enjoy myself, though. I feel at home circling hordes of enemies and diminishing their numbers with chunky weaponry. The atmosphere of Devil Daggers is creepy and lends itself well to making you want to know what else is out there in the arena.

Devil Daggers deceivingly old school. Initially, I thought it was like other games with solo horde modes, but the deliberate spawning structure of enemies actually reminds me of old arcade games. The arcade feel is tied to Devil Daggers' focus on its leaderboard. It can really feel like you are beating your head against the wall if you are only playing against your own times, but having friendly competition opens the door for addiction. In that regard, it can even be compared to quick/twitch-based mobile games with similar leaderboards. I kept going back to Super Hexagon since that game was also about surviving for a set amount of time instead of generating points. What we have here is a puzzle game, except it's buried underneath a crazy fast action game. Devil Daggers is unlike anything I've ever played.

Will I keep playing?

I like it, but I'm not going to play by myself. However, I will keep trying to push my friends to jump in to get some competition going. The second that happens, I'll be playing Devil Daggers on a regular basis until I have beat them all.

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