I am weapon: Revival Review

I am weapon: Revival, developed by Krealit who have made Guns n Zombies prior. The game is kinda like If Hatred became even more devoid of story and progression. Taking control of a man with amnesia, travelling through a land of his own dreams, to find his memories which are both guarded and under attack by Clowns, phantoms of his own psych. Senseless blood and gore await you in this action game set within this world of darkness.

Story

You land at the beginning of a horror filled realm, almost set within a circus, with an emptiness in your head, congratulations you’ve hit amnesia-ridden-protagonist status! Soon enough you are accompanied by a little spirit of sorts, trying to guide you on your way through this world to piece together what memories have been locked away.

During your travels you will meet merchants, talking trees and seers, with a side quest or 5 for each of them to hand off to you. A lot of these can be overlooked and forgotten, but there are points where it forces the player to complete “side” missions to open up doors and generally progress through the game.

The story in its entirety is rather boring, lengthening itself through seemingly endless hordes of enemies and survival levels. Going in a repeat of 1 mission for story/exploration then 1 mission of survival/defence. After every mission you are given photographs with some text to read that delve into the story before the game, representing the protagonist’s memories. Sadly you don’t get much out of the story itself, it doesn’t pull you in and it certainly won’t keep you on the edge of your seat.

Gameplay

Revival plays like many other twin stick shooters, run and gun or Hack n slash games. You control movement with WASD with mouse for your aiming and shooting, using R for reload and 1-3 for turrets or drones. You use hearts to heal your health, pickup ammo for your weapons, souls for currency, elixirs for upgrades and prototypes for unlocking shop purchases.

The shop allows you to buy prototypes you pick up, upgrade them with souls or elixirs, however you will find you have much more souls then you’ll ever need. The difference in power between weapons is too small, you won’t notice if you’re getting any stronger until late game or if you’re lucky enough to obtain a turret from the random prototypes.

There are some riddles and puzzles to solve throughout the game, with many being side-content, but again some of that is forced onto you to progress. They aren’t generally hard to do, however the phrasing of some options can put you off quite a lot, leading you to answers that would never really fit with the question. A lot of what you will be figuring out will mostly just frustrate you, being designed mostly to lengthen your time with the game.

Overall thoughts and feelings

Revival in its entirety feels under polished, empty and lifeless. The soundtrack contains 2 songs on loop, just throwing metal jams at your eardrums as you fight endless waves of clowns. Any sentiment of horror is laughable when enemies are merely running into your bullets, exploding into gibs and blood. Progression is almost non-existent for your character, weapons are too similar with weak effects following you until weapon 4 or 5 in the selection. Attacks are weightless with nothing to them besides a “pew pew” sound effect, leading to the lack of accomplishment. Co-op feels just tacked on the end of the game as well, forcing both players to be present to talk to NPCs with no real co-op activities.

No voice acting, besides laughter and annoying noises, adds even more to the sense that this game didn’t have enough budget or time put into it. Too much text is given to the player to read through, sometimes poorly written. In an action game with non-stop action it does not fit at all, you expect the protagonist to have a word or two to say with clowns beating down on him but all you get is 1 or 2 paragraphs of text before a mission starts or a boss fight. Combined with a lacklustre story, amnesia plot point with a hint of “kill things forever”, it can be hard to actually hold any attachment.

I am weapon: Revival gets a 4/10, there is a game here, with some good weapon choice albeit a horribly varied one. Gunplay is solid in points but with endless waves you will just hold down the left mouse button for the majority of the game. Riddles and side-content can break up the monotony, but with quests that require you to traverse half the map over and over again, it becomes too tiresome. Difficulty is pretty consistent, with a steady climb through the levels, but the climb never stops which can lead to some frustrating fights later on if your luck wasn’t up to par for porotype drops.

I played the majority of this with a friend in co-op with some single player experience thrown in. Throughout the game he never got a turret or drone where I got most of them and was significantly better equipped to fight enemies, whereas he got more heart inventory and stuff that kept him alive.