Dead Cells Review

Dead Cells Review

Expert Level Roguelike

8.5/10

Roguelikes are a dime a dozen these days. It has become a buzzword that tends to make most people cringe. The Roguelike market is over-saturated and most lack personality. This is not the case with Dead Cells, thankfully. This game is stylized, brutal, and frustrating in the best possible way. It keeps to the Roguelike brand but still turns the concept on its head in order to draw you back in again and again.

       For those who don’t know the concept, a Roguelike is a game that relies on procedurally generated levels, permanent death, and high fantasy plot. Each level has a number of elements, characters, and traps that the game can pull from, and it’s completely random which the game will choose each run. You are usually meant to play through the entire game in one go without dying, leading to a lot of grinding in order to become as strong as possible on subsequent runs. This genre had its start in the 1980’s but gained a lot, if not too much, attention in the last 5 to 6 years. The term Roguelike comes from the game Rogue, one of the first games to have this style of gameplay. This game was a top-down dungeon-crawler and, while those still exist, most Roguelikes have evolved into gimmicky side-scrolling adventures.

      Dead Cells is a hybrid Roguelike, Metroidvania game created by indie company Motion Twin. Metroidvania, as stated in my Hollow Knight review, is a game type that features a side-scrolling, interconnected world that requires backtracking and use of various gadgets to access previously locked areas. Dead Cells takes place on an unnamed island that has been infected by a virus called The Malaise. The plot is minimalistic and is told in pieces by finding random rooms in every level. You play as an unnamed prisoner who has become immortal and is trying to find a way off the island. Because he is immortal, whenever he “dies” his floating head returns to the start of the game, steals a new body, and begins the journey all over again.
       At first, Dead Cells is standard procedure for a Roguelike. You fight your way through each level until you die, then start over and hope for a better layout and item drops. However, unlike most other Roguelikes I know of, Dead Cells encourages you to get stronger on the fly. You can upgrade your stats mid-level and in between each level is a staging ground where you can spend “Cells” to unlock permanent upgrades, weapons, and special abilities. This lowers the amount of grinding needed and takes away pacing issues a lot of other Roguelikes have. There are also multiple paths to the end, some requiring a certain ability only obtained using another path. This way, the variety in the levels stays high throughout. Combat is easy to pick-up and satisfying to execute as well. Weapons boil down to swords, shields, bows, grenades, and traps. The amount of modifiers that can be added (at random) is staggering and experimenting with all the types of weapons was fun even when you knew you would die doing so.

       Dead Cells is also visually stylized. It uses sleek, 16-bit graphics mixed with some 3-D rendering and is all around pleasing to look at. The level designs are equal parts dark, grim, and filled with a ton of background easter eggs that can make you stop and stare at a wall for minutes at a time. Enemy variety is somewhat limited, but they are all beautiful to look at and terrifying to fight if you aren’t ready for their attacks. The music is fitting and catchy but gets old after playing through the same world over and over again. However, the element of the world that stands out the most to me is the snarkiness. This game does not take itself too seriously, and can often be pretty funny. Characters who interact with The Prisoner make fun of his willingness to do the same thing over and over again, and loading screens are very sassy.         
       Where Dead Cells falls short is in the ending and replay value. This game came out on consoles a couple months ago, after a year of being Early Access on PC, and due to the obscene amounts of grinding associated with this type of game, (as well as other games taking up most of my time), it took me a considerable amount of time to get to the end. Also, I may just suck, but we don’t need to talk about that. That grind time is perfectly fine, I was ready for it, but when I finally got the right combination of everything and reached the end, It did not seem worth it. A few more options open up to you for another go around, but honestly, I lack the drive to do so. The game isn’t nearly as changed as one would think after coming to the end of a long grind fest, and unless I missed something, I don’t see much reason to go through again except for completionist status and a sudo-New Game + mode.

       I enjoyed Dead Cells for how it changes up the formula. Each run gave me just enough reward that I became stronger but needed to figure out what I did wrong. The stylized level design, fun combat, and a staggering amount of variety kept me coming back. Dead Cells is a perfect game to pick up and play for a few hours and relax, but don’t expect a ton of replay value. If more levels or bosses were added, I think it could become one of the juggernauts of the indie game world. Motion Twin, much like Team Cherry of Hollow Knight, are two indie developers that everyone needs to watch. They have untapped talent and could be responsible for some of the greatest games in the coming years.