Life On The Grid

This game kind of came at me out of the blue.  I had not heard much about it prior to its release but then started to hear more and more about it as its release neared and after checking out some game-play footage, it looked like it would be a lot of frantic fun so I decided to pick it up on Steam and boy am I glad that I did.

The simplest way to describe this game is a 2D cover based shooter.  You are sent on various inane missions by an anthropomorphic rabbit called Bunnylord who for unknown reasons must become Mayor to prevent the world from being destroyed.  According to him, the largest aspect of winning a political campaign is murdering lots of bad guys in the morning.  So this is what you are sent off to do.  From start to finish, this game is an absolutely and totally utterly insanely fast paced adrenaline rush which has you rolling, ducking, dodging, shooting, exploding and generally causing as much chaos as possible at a break neck pace.  You can take cover behind most objects to avoid bullets, but there is no hiding from the melee enemies that appear later on and you just have to kill these guys before they can get to you.  There is a good range of different enemy types that are introduced over the course of the game and some of them are so unbelievably and instantly lethal they will have you dreading the sight of them.  There are various limited use weapons enhancements you can pick up along the way such as explosive rounds or extra powerful bullets and these become practically essential in the later levels.

The difficulty ramps up a lot towards the end of the game.  And I do mean a lot.  It can be quite maddeningly difficult at times because there are no checkpoints whatsoever so if you die, you must do the whole level over again.  This is again especially annoying in the later levels because these are both very difficult and very long so you will have to do the bulk of these levels many times over.  But you want to persevere.  You want to keep going.  Because of the frantic pace, you don’t have a lot of time to get irritated at the game and just want to keep getting back in there blowing fools into pieces.  It’s no Hotline Miami, but it is quite difficult in the final stages.  Seemingly unintentionally at times because there are many sections where you must roll and/or jump between buildings with judge drops below you.  As one would assume, a large fall is instant death and at times, it is difficult to ascertain exactly which way is the correct one so sometimes experimentation in these scenarios can also be very lethal.  The health system is based off a regenerating one that slowly restores your health if you avoid damage, but you do not have a lot of it to begin with, so just a handful of quick shots are usually enough to do you in and all melee attacks are instantly lethal.

There is a great variety of characters unlocked as you progress all of who have different special skills, weapons, speed of movement and such, but I found that only a couple of them are genuinely useful and most of the rest were more hindrances than helpful.  My favourite for most of it was the most basic and very first starting character but he was later replaced with a slightly better one in the endgame.  All of the characters have hilarious cockney, Scottish, Welsh and English accents from various regions.  Their speech during the missions is also extremely vulgar and entertaining so it’s worth trying each character at least once to hear what kind of stuff they come out with in the heat of battle.

One negative point I found is that the controls can be slightly fiddly at times.  Particularly with the fast-paced frantic game-play sometimes you will end up rolling into a hail of bullets or a sword instead of taking cover like you wanted to.  Also, the dialogue is very funny most of the time but occasionally feels a little forced and is being just a little too wacky for the sake of being wacky.  This is usually when Bunnylord is giving you your briefings and feels like he is just being random in an attempt to be funny which does not always work.

Not A Hero Review Summary

Not A Hero is an extremely enjoyable new twist on the cover-based shooter genre.  The humour and the breakneck speed add greatly to the overall sensation and atmosphere.  Once you are in the groove, you will be sliding through the levels at blistering speed with a huge smile on your face as you decimate your enemies in the name of Bunnylord.  And then you will be screaming profanities like a sailor with Tourette’s when you die over and over again.  But you will want to keep going back and do it again because it’s just so purely enjoyable.

Final Score: 4/5

Not A Hero on Steam

Not A Hero Let’s Play footage