Wednesday 10 September 2014

No Game New Year: Charlie Murder


Charlie Murder was another game I downloaded off Xbox Live Games with Gold. I started playing it because I knew I only had a few days before my girlfriend came up for the weekend, and usually once she’s gone I have the urge to play a different game. I have no idea why things work like that, but they do! So I decided to play what howlongtobeat.com told me was a relatively short game.

The band sound as good as they look...
I think the game is best described as a side-scrolling beat-em-up with RPG elements. You play one of the five members of the titular Charlie Murder, a hardcore punk band that was murdered by a rival death metal band Gore Quaffer. You can have anything up to four players involved with the game playing as the other members of the band, and the main differences between the characters seem to be their special attacks. The ‘singer,’ Charlie, screams blue murder, as does his backing ‘vocalist’[1] Kelley “Skelekitten” Skitten. Guitarist Lester Deth makes fire shoot out of his guitar, and bassist Tommy Homicide makes acid-coated buzz-saws run across the floor. Finally, the drummer ‘The Rexecutioner’ makes bits of his kit fly around and hit things. You have a basic set of attacks, which when done in the right order can develop in to combos, and you have to battle your way through to the “battle of the bands” through witches, ninjas, pirates and devils to name but a few.

I probably would have enjoyed this game a lot more had I not spent most of the summer playing Streets of Rage II, which is the best game ever created and as far as I’m concerned was as good as side-scrolling beat-em-ups ever were or ever will be. The most enjoyable aspect of the game for me was, of all things, the story. This very rarely happens with me, because by the time I usually get to the end of a game that prides itself on its story, (40 hour RPGs, anyone?) I find the scale has been blown right out of proportion. But the game's story really did have an affect on me...

Here’s what Wikipedia says about the plot (it’s about right):

The game's protagonist, Charlie Murder, is a member of a garage punk band of the same name. Charlie kicks one of the founding members, Paul, out of the band, and begins to experience chart-topping success creating music in a new genre with new bandmates. Under the name Lord Mortimer, Paul forms his own band, Gore Quaffer, and makes a pact with a demon, raising an army of demons and undead in order to destroy Charlie Murder.[2][3] Charlie and his band are killed at the beginning of the game, fight out of hell, and are reborn on Earth amidst an apocalypse caused by Lord Mortimer and his army.[5][8] In order to stop the apocalypse, Charlie Murder must defeat Gore Quaffer in a Battle of the Bands.[4]

During the game, a series of flashbacks detail the game's backstory. As Charlie and his new band mates experience success without Paul, the latter becomes increasingly upset, eventually vowing revenge. The flashbacks neither paint Charlie Murder in a wholly positive light, nor Paul in a wholly negative light.

Now, spool time back to what is at this point eight years before the ever-moving now. I was playing in a band called Jack’s Legacy. There were four of us in the band, for the most part we were all good friends and we had the potential to be the best band in the world. That sounds like I’m blowing my own trumpet, or casting aspersions on everything I’ve done since then – but we just were that good. Sadly, a few months before we really hit our stride, our drummer joined a different band, which was no better than Jack’s Legacy, but a lot more busy. The inevitable happened, and a conflict of interest came up with the band’s schedules. This and some of the most underhanded shit-stirring I’ve ever had to deal with on the part of the drummer resulted in some blazing rows, missed gigs and an almost uncontrollable amount of bitterness on my part. We went our separate ways, and I’ve never spoken to him since then. And as the drummer has the luxury of not having to give a shit about what I think since the band broke up in February the following year, I doubt I ever will.

Can you see how the story in this game resonated with me? It struck a little too close to home. While I certainly never made a diabolic pact and murdered the rival band, I did sometimes wonder for a couple of years afterwards what might happen if I were to turn up at one of their gigs and smash up their equipment. I never did that either, I would never actually do such a thing, but it gave me a moment of grim satisfaction to think about it… but seriously, there is a flashback cut-scene where Paul, devoid of a band, is playing an acoustic guitar at an open mic while the audience is more interested in Charlie Murder on the TV screens behind him. I’ve definitely been there.

 
The game is presented very well and I was interested to see how it all worked out in the end. I got the ‘bad’ ending, and I suspect it was because I missed one of a set of five collectables. (I defeated the appropriate boss which left behind an eye; I didn’t realise you had to grab it, and by the time I came back the boss was gone.) But I got to the end credits, which was really all I was looking for with this one. There are more achievement points available for multiple play-throughs, but here my problems with the game start to come out of the woodwork:

First, I don’t think the game is anywhere near as good as Streets of Rage in terms of its fighting. While there are different combos available, there’s very little – if any – combining different attacks to do a huge amount of damage. There are different enemy varieties but you rarely have to alter your tactics in order to beat them. There are points in the game where you have to think about what you’re doing – boss battles, harder sets of enemies – but only because it’s hard, not because there’s a specific tactic you need to beat it.

Second, the pacing of the game was all off in terms of its checkpoints. I’m glad you have unlimited lives, don’t get me wrong, but having to go back and play a good half an hour’s worth again because you died seems a little cheap.

The RPG elements basically involve experience points, loot and shopping. There is a huge variety of collectables, clothes and accessories you can use to enhance your character, but having to equip everything slowed the game right down for me when I’d rather have been kicking the tar out of something. The XP system is reminiscent of role-playing games, but since the enemies scale up with your levels, it doesn’t make much difference. It’s nowhere near as clever as it thinks it is, in that respect.

Finally, while the art style is excellent – and I will always praise a game for trying to do something other than gritty realism – it’s not really my taste. It all looked a bit… washy and grimy for my liking.

I might give it another go at some point, but for now, I’m pleased to have got to the end of the game so I can play something else, probably next week.

See you soon!


[1] Of course, I use the terms ‘singer’ and ‘vocalist’ loosely…