Talent can definitely carry a media product. When pedigree is presented, one has to assume a certain amount of quality is assured. At the same time, the viewer is expected to come in with a certain… understanding of the subject matter.
The thing about Arc System Works’ upcoming twin-stick shooter Damon and Baby is it’s clearly aimed at a younger audience. A very Japanese and younger audience. And yours truly is far from either. Therefore, story criticism will be kept to a minimum and we’ll mostly focus on the game itself.
As mentioned, DAMON and BABY is published by Arc System Works. And with Arc System Works came Daisuke Ishiwatari, the composer and illustrator known for his character designs in the Guilty Gear fighting game franchise.
In fact, some of the characters in DAMON and BABY are blatantly just child-friendly versions of fighters from Guilty Gear. Nevertheless, all 2D art looks great and comfy. Some UI elements’ bells and whistles may seem a tad busy, but it is still leagues better than plain, soulless rectangles which are the norm nowadays.
Unfortunately, this is where praise for visuals ends and it’s all downhill from here. The menus become buggy and receive double inputs if you attach a controller to your computer while the game is running. Some of the button prompts are mixed and a tutorial text was missing, but that’s probably a demo thing.
Some 3D actor models look good enough, but environments are all over the place. Textures repeat themselves like a tiled Windows 95 wallpaper, trees and rock formations are copied and pasted right next to each other without a second thought.
We honestly hope they are placeholders in this early demo, because ironically an invisible wall would look better. And it would be easier on the system as well. For a game that looks this simplistic it sure can be taxing on your machine. And it is a simplistic art style.
Models look ok, but there are very few shadows and everything looks stiff and stilted. Damon just sort of hovers over the terrain while aiming, it doesn’t look natural. It’s even worse than Fallout 3 if you ever looked at you character running diagonally in third person. At times it resembles a Unity Store asset flip in terms of polish.
When a busy arena becomes littered with item drops from fallen enemies, it becomes very difficult to tell what’s what, who’s who and where you’re supposed to be aiming. Dialogue boxes fill up with words only half-way, leaving plenty of negative space for no real reason.
Kanji usually takes up less space than English, that’s why most speed-runners opt for Japanese versions of games – it takes less time for text to appear that way.
This leads us to believe it simply a bad call on localization team to pick that particular font for text. In cut scenes, actors are barely animated and rely on 2D portraits to convey emotion, it may as well be a puppet theater.
Considering the subject matter, that could have been more appropriate. The story takes place in a world not unlike our own, but with one key difference: demons and angels are very real. Demons are not necessarily evil and angels may not necessarily be the nicest people to run into either.
There is a strict and violent hierarchy of power in H-E-double-hockey-sticks and Damon was very close to coming to the very top. That is until he was summoned by his old friend, a priest, who entrusts him with a baby. This curse reduces Damon into a fat and stubby demon and bonds him to the child.
Unable to quit his “Lone Wolf and Cub” cosplay, Damon sets off on this bureaucratic adventure. On the way he is assisted by Hell Insurance, Heaven’s Child-Protective services and will most likely run into the Purgatory Plumbing as well.
Music is pretty simple, the battle theme is a bit over the top, but serviceable. But the over-world theme is just a droning orchestral score. Sustained notes that do the bare minimum to convey the mood of a scene. But this is nothing compared to the cacophony of sound effects in this game.
The volume mixing, length and layering of sounds are nightmarish. They’ve picked some of the least appropriate sounds for certain actions. Gunshots are very loud, sometimes they don’t play at all, sometimes they keep layering over each other. In the tutorial cave, there is a gun trap with three machine guns firing at the same time.
Both the firing sound effects and bullet impacts overlay each other, drowning out all music, sounds and capacity to think. And right after that, a mini-boss encounter forces you to detonate multiple explosive projectiles at once. Which is just as loud, if not even louder.
Some enemies, like the Boogeyman, screech every time before they attack. And they teleport next to you. So if there are multiple BoogyMEN in an arena with you, be prepared to hear the soothing sounds of a sirens overlapping one another. You also can’t run away, closed doors mean nothing to them.
Reloading makes a ricochet sound, aiming makes some sort of high-tech computer noise and simply stopping after walking makes a metallic jingle. It’s supposed to be Damon’s belly jiggling, but instead it sounds like he’s cocking his gun.
Speaking of guns, the gun-play is needlessly painful too. For some reason, instead of simply aiming with your right stick or mouse, you have to first equip your gun. Entering this stance slows you down significantly and doesn’t start firing automatically. You’ll need to double-tap and hold the button to respond quickly if there is a danger present.
Melee is pointless except for interrupting enemy attacks and is especially finicky to use with mouse and keyboard. Dungeons are gigantic and the map doesn’t fill up on its own. You don’t even get a location marker, so you just have to use your own memory to navigate. Some areas require certain upgrades to get through, but they aren’t marked on the map either.
The wall-jumping mechanic is all busted. Instead of simply bouncing off the walls, you have to hold the directional button TOWARDS the wall you want to bounce off of. So if you’re not quick enough, you just end up hugging the same wall you just leapt from.
Saving is all sorts of strange as well. Instead of using the now-typical Souls’ bonfire system, they split it into 2 portions: sleeping for health refill and spending level-up points; sitting down on a couch or toilet for actual saving.
There are no auto-saves in this game, so you’re playing by old school rules: no save – no progress. We falsely assumed that since sleeping gets its own animation you have to wait for to finish, it would also save the game at least for the current session. Sitting down also repopulates the map, so it makes no sense to separate it into two systems.
DAMON and BABY takes a lot of elements from successful games and just makes them feel rough. From time to time the combat loop clicked in place and arena fights felt enjoyable, but there would always be something there to sour the mood. Be it clunky controls, wonky animations, obnoxious sound design or half-baked environments.
I sincerely hope these issues are due to the fact this is an unpolished demo, because there are clearly people trying really hard to make a comfy experience with spectacular locations later in the game. But considering DAMON and BABY is due to release in a month, there is little to expect.
This early version of the game was provided by Arc System Works. Screenshots are from a title under development. The game is scheduled to release March 26th on PC via Steam, Nintendo Switch 1|2 and PlayStation 4|5.
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Author: 360 Technology Group
