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.
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| 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.
