Indie Game of the Week 487: Blast Brigade vs. the Evil Legion of Dr. Cread

As summer changes to autumn a young man's attention turns to that ever-present distraction in life: exploraction games. Yes, it's another one of those. They keep releasing 'em and somebody's gotta review 'em. Blast Brigade vs. the Evil Legion of Dr. Cread belongs to the shooter half of the Metroid-Castlevania dyad, focused as it is on ranged combat with a multidirectional aiming mechanic, though if I had to compare its tone (and to some extent the visual style) to another game series it would be SNK's Metal Slug. Heroic but dim B.L.A.S.T. agent Jeff Jefferson crash-lands on the remote island lair of the subtitular supervillain Dr. Cread absent most of his equipment and companions, scattered by the same crash, and must track them down while shooting his way through the also-subtitular Evil Legion along with the island's hostile fauna and flora. The presentation is very tongue-in-cheek, frequently deprecating the loose cannon lead and his long-suffering teammates as he obliviously wanders from one fracas to the next, his main interests being heavy ordnance and napping in hammocks (which double as save points).

The island's NPCs aren't always the most reliable bunch, but they might still help you out. It does seem like very few people care for what Dr. Cread's done with the place, including leaving prototype colossal robots everywhere.

Jeff's initial weapon is an assault rifle that regenerates ammo on its own, but others like the shotgun and grenade launcher have a finite stock that can only be restored by hitting a checkpoint or finding ammo drops from enemies. His spy watch/PDA offers a number of passive abilities, should the player find the computer chips these passives are on and the batteries to power them, while the usual selection of traversal upgrades are typically doled out after boss fights (the mid-air dash being the first, as it so often is). There also seems to be multiple characters to play as, incrementally unlocked as you win them over to your side, though at least in one case you have to defeat them in battle first.

While you don't need to be a Metal Slug or Contra veteran to approach this game, it also wouldn't hurt: Blast Brigade has a relatively high difficulty in its dual role as a throwback run-and-gun and exploraction game. With only five hit points to start with and a single curative that restores two (obviously, both can be upgraded) your allowance for errors is very slight early on. The game compensates for this by being accommodating in other ways: For one, you lose nothing on death besides your geographical progress and a fraction of the cash you had on you, the latter of which can be recovered on-site. The map has a feature where it'll dim the color of visited rooms that still have collectibles to find for the sake of easier backtracking, a motorcycle-based fast travel system that can take you right back to the hub, the aforementioned passives, and a minor base-building aspect where you can locate and spend construction kits that unlock other benefits either at the base or in the field.

The first boss, despite its intimidating appearance, is a total freebie but later ones require some dexterous dodging as well as all the firepower you can muster. They've all been pretty sponge-y so far, I won't lie.

Aesthetically, the game riffs on the cartoony Metal Slug universe with a clean, minimal visual style so often seen in mobile games like Clash of Clans et al. Despite the small sprites, characters are expressive and fun to watch emote to either Jeff's most recent act of idiocy or some other mishap, and the voice acting is generally done well with the VAs eating up the generically silly G.I. Joe-level script. I haven't noticed the music too much but it's appropriate for the exaggerated bombastic tone they're going for here. The level design and visuals have been diverse, given this is a futuristic base for building death robots situated in the middle of a tropical island with plenty of wildlife, and barriers that can eventually be overcome stand out well enough in the environment even if the game appears to lack the means to mark these obstacles on the map (though knowing there's something still there to find is plenty helpful). Might be a case where you either take notes or wait until you've found all the upgrades before taking another pass for collectibles, though given the difficulty creep I might find myself sweeping older areas a few times just for the sake of survival (and my cortisol levels).

Overall, Blast Brigade is going for the trendy exploraction angle while still maintaining a mechanical and stylistic allegiance to the arcade 8-bit and 16-bit run-and-gun shooters that have plenty of things to shoot and/or explode and a genial Saturday morning cartoon show sense of humor that turns what might otherwise be a horrific series of destructive war crimes into good, clean fun for all ages. Only vaguely Hague-y, as it were. Minor squabbles aside—the dash doesn't have i-frames, which always rankles, and it was originally attached to a bumper rather than a trigger which felt wrong enough for me to want to change it, though I couldn't tell you why beyond "gamer instinct"—I've been having a good time with it so far and am looking forward to polishing it off in the weekend. If you like your exploraction games with a focus on gunplay over melee, and grew up with the same ambiguously jingoistic super soldier/spy cartoons I did, I might give this one a recommend.

Worth remembering to come back to this attractive little coastal village for all the ugly military buildings you can construct once the required materials have been found. Hey, I figure we're doing the natives a favor; who wouldn't want their straw hut filled with munitions?

Rating: 4 out of 5. (So far.)

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