It's a shame we don't see too many beat-em-up games anymore. Ever since the runaway success of games such as Scott Pilgrim vs. The World: The Game, Castle Crashers, and a slew of other digital download titles, a large contingent of classic, side-scrolling action titles have come and gone. Left in the wild where only the strong will survive, perhaps the problem becomes one of quantity over quality, with so many crashing and burning simply because no one is there to champion them.
Then again, others develop a pretty niche with diehard fans. Perhaps those with the worst fate, however, are the ones that reach competency with no pizazz. You probably know the type: it is those games in the middle, those good but unremarkable titles that maybe have a bit of a cult following, but will struggle to find any audience due to lack of press or simply no memory of its existence with the glut of similar games on the market? This is more or less the fate of a game like Charlie Murder.
Another in the long tradition of beat ‘em up titles, Charlie Murder is what Brutal Legend was for RTS games: a beat 'em up based around a world of hardcore punk and death metal music. Released by Ska Studios, the indie studio created by James Silva, Charlie Murder is an amalgam of ideals typically seen in Silva’s games, cobbled together to form an interesting but uneven experience on the whole.
Silva burst onto the gaming scene back in 2009, when his first major title, The Dishwasher: Dead Samurai, was released on Xbox Live Arcade after tying for first place in Microsoft's Dream-Build-Play Contest back in 2007. Silva won $10,000 and the chance to publish his game on the service, which at the time was critically acclaimed for being a stylized, unique beat ‘em up.
This history is notable because Silva was a part of that first wave of indie game developers; The Dishwasher: Dead Samurai is always seen as a peer to more prominent and critically acclaimed indie titles of the time, including Machinarium, Limbo, and most prominently, Braid and Minecraft. Many forget how this wave of indie success was seen as a major competitor to bigger budgeted titles, and with the burgeoning online storefronts of the Xbox Marketplace, the PlayStation Network, and of course Steam, it was becoming a viable market that would see a lot of potential, and in many cases popular, games released.
Flash forward to 2013, and Silva sticks to their crude but eye-catching side-scrolling roots and gives us Charlie Murder, the tale of the eponymous hardcore punk band that was intentionally killed by a rival, Paul. Paul, a former friend of front man Charlie, was cast out into the cold and became jealous of the band’s rise to fame, so he made a pact with Satan to become successful as well. Of course, it brings about the apocalypse too, which complicates everything in this intensely exaggerated tale of revenge.
Charlie Murder is a very strange beast, and it feels mostly intentional, but not in a coherent way. Silva wanted to throw everything he can think of at the player, and while some enemies you would expect, such as zombies and demons, you also find yourself fighting off more unusual creatures out of nowhere. We get witches, giant rats, ninjas, a robotic Sasquatch, slasher-movie wannabes, and even an enemy dressed as a hamburger. There is really no rhyme or reason to most of the enemy types, other than being an army of pulpy bits you can dismember, disintegrate, and beat the crap out of as Charlie and his bandmates.
The game takes a minimalist approach to its storytelling, even though it does pack a little surprise. The storyline is mostly discerned from some well-placed cutscenes that basically paint Charlie and his band as a bunch of dicks, while Paul becomes a tragic villain, albeit a jealous one that is seduced by temptation for revenge. In many ways were playing anti-heroes in Charlie Murder, which I guess makes sense because the “hardcore punk” vibe is supposed to be amplified to its most exaggerated here, which is kind of ironic, considering you're not fighting against the establishment, but rather for it to quell the anarchy of the apocalypse.
One of the few attempts to deviate from the standard beat-em-up is to have the choice between five “classes”, which is an attempt to throw in RPG-styled mechanics to shake things up. Each class does have special abilities in the form of tattoos that they can acquire to dish out damage against the onslaught of enemies, and equipable items such as t-shirts and gloves that grant attack bonuses and defense. There is also a beer brewing mechanic that acts as a potion-making scheme, provided you find the right ingredients to brew it.
Thematically, this is all quite good and offers a bit of flavor to the entire experience, though Charlie Murder does flounder from these elements at times. Most of the enemies scale to you as you progress through the game, so a majority of the upgrades and special abilities you acquire tend to do the same DPS as you go forward. It is a problem that makes overpowering foes difficult, and makes most builds kind of a moot point as there is often no real recourse outside of more power. Only the zombies seem to be the exception to this rule, but as they are one of the most basic enemies you get, fighting a horde of them becomes second nature by the 2nd half of the game.
The inventory system is also rather obtuse, as there is no way to efficiently sort out what you have, especially when using healing items in a protracted fight. All of your level-ups also take place on Charlie Murder’s version of an iPhone, a tiny menu that is difficult to read when brought up. Visually, it's a nice flair in the design; in practice, you usually need to be in a quiet spot to go over your characters' progress. It also doesn’t help that the “classes” are ineffective outside of abilities you can get tattoos for, since you can level up your attack, defense, speed, and magic power without restrictions anyway. Ultimately, all of your bandmates play kind of the same as the game progresses.
There is also a lot of repetition going on in Charlie Murder. I don’t mean in terms of actual controls, which are adequate in creating combos and simple enough to utilize. In fact, the game handles well and offers a bit of heft with your moves. Charlie Murder's game design, however, sort of betrays the smooth beat-em-up mechanics. Silva borrows a lot of the same mechanics as The Dishwasher–the general beat ‘em up portion is similar, of course–but we also have PlayStation-era God of War-style QTE kills returning, a cooldown for the magic system, and a Rock Band-like mini-game between cutscenes. It's not that these aspects of the game are bad, but it does feel a bit recycled from past experiences, and kind of harms Charlie Murder because, thematically, it makes sense, but mechanically it's a mishmash of ideas strung together.
That is the major flaw with Charlie Murder; it is desperately trying to do too many things at once, when it should have focused on polishing one or two ideas to a fine shine. The beat'em-up gameplay is solid; why not emphasize more of the RPG aspects and make each band member fully unique? The band playing music makes sense as a mini-game, but give it more tangible rewards or enhance it by utilizing the beat'em up controls more closely. Maybe ditch the QTE's? Charlie Murder becomes a gameplay soup, filled with all of these ideas but lacking a coherent flavor that lets it stand out.
Even the graphical style struggles to strike an identity. There is a twinge of that offbeat design seen in The Dishwasher, although there is a lot more vibrancy and color found in Charlie Murder. Silva’s visual style has definitely improved, and it shows, despite being as minimalist as possible. You have scenes with colors that pop in tandem with the crudely hand-drawn characters, a lot of high-contrast colors, such as pink, red, and green especially, that mix in well with the purposefully jerky animation.
Charlie Murder also contains a very good soundtrack, both in terms of music and ambiance sound. Fast-paced guitar riffs litter the level soundtracks, and the mini-games, even with their weird singing and frankly odd mini-game implementation, offer a nice break in between the chaos of the main levels. In particular are these random “call-in” show segments that are heard in some shops found in the game, talking about the game's events as you go along. They are worth listening to once or twice for sure, adding some more character to the game this way.
The design behind Charlie Murder does feature some branching pathways to dead ends and optional sub-bosses, but other than that it is a fairly linear adventure. It is also an uneven one at this, ramping up the difficulty heavily by the time you get to the midway point. Of particular note is a gauntlet where you fight former bosses all in a row. Considering bosses act more like health sponges but can dish out hard-hitting attacks, it makes this section in particular grueling to slog through.
For all the ideas thrown at you, very few of them stick. Many of the elements are too cumbersome to deal with, the gameplay is tired, and the overall pacing is wildly uneven. I hate to say it, but Charlie Murder just falls flat, looking amateurish in comparison to a lot of games when it originally released, which is really unfair to Silva and the work he put into it. Thankfully, Charlie Murder would escape the fate of most Xbox Live exclusive titles from that era by getting a re-release on PC in 2017. Silva is also still developing games, being one of the more consistent indie devs out there.
Charlie Murder is one of those games that you can't help but like, despite a sort of flatness to the experience that holds it back from being truly memorable. It was a game that was probably destined to find an audience that will sustain it, which is often the kiss of death for any indie title. The nagging issues within the game hamper any fun that could be had, and while there is novelty in its attitude and minimalist approach, it really struggles to make an impact. Perhaps there is an audience for this hardcore little beat'em up, but it unfortunately sits in that middle ground of being good but not great, and that is sadly not enough sometimes for an indie game in a fairly niche genre.
Author's Note: This review was originally written for Blistered Thumbs back in 2013. It has been edited from its original form and posted here for preservation.