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DeathSmiles Review Microsoft Xbox360

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  • DeathSmiles Review Microsoft Xbox360

    DeathSmiles is a horizontally scrolling shooter, developed by genre stalwarts Cave, in which the player takes control of one of four witches and proceeds to do battle with all manner of Halloween denizens. One of its most striking aspects is simply how gorgeous its light hearted, cartoony gothic style looks. It has without doubt some of the finest looking 2D artwork out there. The character designs, while varied, all look cohesive and, for this home version, the sprites have been completely resampled at much higher resolutions from the original artwork, producing beautiful, crisp and unpixellated images. You’ve got everything from flying Grim Reapers, to giant hovering eyeballs with wings, monstrous plant growths straight out of a 50s B- movie to Hellhounds, trolls, dragons and even walking pigs in chefs’ outfits, to name just a few. They’re bright and colourful with bucket loads of character in a way that only 2D artistry can really capture and seeing them on a large HD screen by their dozen can be quite breathtaking.
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    Then there’s the bosses which take everything to a whole new level. These guys often literally fill the screen and are rich with detail and variety. One level sees a huge tree spanning the right hand side from top to bottom, branches reaching out at you like some kind of Evil Dead extra, with huge glowing facial features recessed deep into its bark. The mood is somewhat lightened though, when it starts flinging huge, grinning apples across the screen at you. Then there’s the two headed dragon who can fill the screen with fireballs, or the large, flying skeletons that lob pumpkins at you, as well as the massive giant’s head chained to the bottom of the screen that explodes midway through to reveal its reanimated skull fighting on even in death. The game also features undeniably the coolest end game boss of all time - Tyrannosatan, a monstrosity that certainly lives up to Cave‘s reputation for filling the screen with projectiles.
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    The level of artistry, inventiveness and downright inspired design work that’s gone into the looks and ambience of the game are unparalleled, even in a field known to provide rich, stylised visuals. While the backgrounds are a little pixellated it doesn’t really detract and lends the game a bit of old-school charm. There’s a healthy mix of typical horror environments here with a graveyard, spooky marsh, haunted forest and dragon’s cave all making appearances, and, as with the character sprites these are varied and colourful.
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    It's not just the visuals that help DeathSmiles to stand out from the pack - under the hood is one of the deepest, most satisfying scoring systems to be found in the shooter genre. The player progresses through six stages, which can be attempted in any order, before being presented with the final level and an optional extra stage. Hardcore Cave purists may initially balk at the easier difficulty compared to their past output; these first six areas can each be played at one of three difficulty levels, the easiest of which is really very simple. But to breeze through on all the lowest settings is to ignore the wealth of depth just waiting to be discovered under the surface once you start playing for score.
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    The trick to scoring well is to understand two main features, firstly as the player destroys enemies they are rewarded with pickups that contribute to a counter at the bottom of the screen. More valuable pickups will shatter into numerous poorer versions should they bounce on the ground, so players need to be quick in order to gather these up before they reach the bottom of the screen. Once the value reaches one thousand the player enters a mode where all enemies start producing the highest scoring pickups. During this portion of the game each of these valuables that are collected adds to a second counter, kept behind the scenes, that is added as a score bonus to every kill. It’s at this point that the player is able to activate the power up mode wherein their shots do a lot more damage but crucially cause far more pickups to be dropped by enemies and, while this mode remains active, the score based counter becomes based on the number of pickups collected rather than their value. This makes the best approach to then let them shatter into as many of the low valued items as possible before hoovering them all up. Before long this sees the player’s scores reaching astronomical proportions and this is where the skill really starts to show.
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    There’s all kinds of little touches that build on these simple mechanics and turn the proceedings into something really quite special. Different enemies drop varying degrees of objects based on which of the three attacks the player uses, some of which can require very specific positioning of the player’s familiar, a small little creature that follows you around and contributes to your attacks. Precise movement of the familiar can only be done in conjunction with one of the fire types and this in itself can be one of the more challenging aspects of the title, but all too necessary to elevate your scores to the top level. Obviously to get the higher scores players must be tackling the levels at the higher difficulty settings, which adds whole new attack patterns to the boss encounters and makes them far more enjoyable. Should the player select enough of the levels at the top difficulty then death mode is activated. This introduces suicide bullets which are fired at the player whenever an enemy is killed. These can be neutralised with the familiar and will ramp up the score addition counter, but trying to repeatedly perform this kind of precise familiar manipulation whilst also dealing with the actual enemies themselves can be a real feat of multitasking.
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    The real clincher, however, is the manipulation of the power up mode and keeping that counter exactly where you want it. Certain levels in the game benefit from starting with a full power up meter right from the begining, with dense waves of enemies begging to be farmed for points, such as the dragon’s cave with its rock flues or the graveyard with its swarms of flying eyeballs. Where the real magic kicks in is in timing the exact moment at which the power up mode finishes with particular points in the levels. The rate at which this empties is based upon whether the player is firing and if so what kind of attack they are using. During the game you’ll come across various large structures and enemies that will drop a huge swathe of pickups if destroyed during the power up mode, so timing their destruction to just before this finishes will allow you to gather up all these valuables and virtually refill the counter straight away.

    This provides an incredible level of depth to the scoring system, necessitating strategies that span across the level boundaries. What is so perfect about this is that so much of it can be tailored and controlled by the player without ever hitting a brick wall. There’s even an option to restart levels so you can practice your timings, although the score will be invalidated for the run in question. The result is a game that is very beginner friendly, a newbie to the genre can spend their first few hours just trying to survive without worrying about their scores, but it‘s there for those that want to really get their teeth into it. The videos of the top players can also be downloaded to give new starters clues and ideas about where to start.

    The absolute beauty of DeathSmiles is that there is no one answer, no perfect pattern to be memorised and copied. What works for one player may not work for another; it’s a game that rewards experimentation and exploration, trying out different routes and sequences to eek a few more points here and there. For that reason it’s a game you’ll never truly be done with - there’ll always be new possibilities to try out and it demonstrates a frankly awe-inspiring level of attention to detail.

    The four different characters all control fairly differently with their own attack patterns, speeds and familiar behaviours. There’s clearly some balancing issues with the original game; Casper is simply too slow to be usable, while Rosa’s extra strength gives her an incredible edge in the boss fights, but these issues have been ironed out in the 1.1 Arrange mode that is also offered in the game (this adds several modifications including manual control of the familiar and various bullet pattern modifications). The Japanese Platinum Hits re-release and the American version also feature the Mega Black Label DLC on the disc, which adds even more to the package, including a new playable character, new stage and whole new, brutal difficulty level.

    DeathSmiles is something very special, it gently eases in newcomers yet underneath has an incredibly sophisticated set of scoring mechanics and level layouts, putting it far ahead of the competition in this regard. The process of route experimentation is thoroughly rewarding but at the same time the game can be enjoyed on a much simpler level, should the player never wish to delve that deep, thanks to the sheer beauty of what’s on offer. DeathSmiles feels fresh and vibrant. It’s a faultless game that has it all and if the world ever needed proof of the continuing viability of the genre, this title is it.
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