Riddled Corpses EX Review
by Amr (@siegarettes)
- Riddled Corpses EX
- Developer- Daniel Fernandez Chavez, Diabolical Mind
- Publisher- Cowcat Games
- PS4, Vita
Riddled Corpses is the kind of game that I like to wind down to. Difficult enough to keep me engaged, straightforward, but with enough considerations to make it more than just pointing your gun in the right direction. Each stage is made up of multiple arenas where waves of enemies approach, with transitional moments where you fend off attacks as the screen scrolls to a new part of the stage. There’s a decent combo system that gives you a multiplier for points and damage as you chain kills, and there are destructible objects in the environment that can set enemies alight.
There’s also enough character in the sprites and enemy design that keeps it from blending in with every other twin stick zombie shooter I’ve played. The story involves demons and time travel, and honestly isn’t very engaging, but it does keep the mix of enemies and stages more interesting than the same tired archetypes that populate zombie fiction.
Right, so that’s an easy recommendation, yeah? Well, it would be, if I didn’t find its upgrade system so tiring.
There are three modes, and for two of them, Story, and Survival, you can level up your characters or save up gold to unlock others with new abilities. Points take a long time to build up, and enemies often have enough health that survival isn’t possible without upgrades. Which stretches five short stages into a grindfest that takes hours. Its more important to level up your character than to play well, which instantly sours the enjoyment of what could have been a breezy and intense hour long game. Not even Survival mode is free from this, since it carries the upgrade system there, making it comical how fast you’ll die if you’re not upgraded.
Arcade mode fares a bit better here, using traditional pickups instead of character upgrades, making the balance drastically better. Unfortunately you’ll also have to finish the entire game in one sitting, since it lacks the level select of Story mode. Having that would have helped remedy a lot of Riddled Corpses’ problems.
There’s a solid game under here, something easy to sit down with and return to, but the balancing and structure around it cut into that. I did have some fun with it, and there’s an immediate appeal that could have carried it through. I wish it had a little more confidence to let its shooting speak for itself, instead of relying on the grind to keep me around.