This is a transcript excerpt covering the score awarded to Sumerian Six on the So Videogames Podcast, Episode 494.
BRAD: It’s been a pretty light week for me in terms of games, but most of my game time this week has gone into Sumerian six. I’ve talked about this before and this will be the final time I talk about it on the show until the end of the year. You can be sure you’ll hear about it again in December, but for right now I just rolled credits on it. And this is going to be the official SVG review, so I’ve got to talk about it one more time.
For those of you who might have missed it before. Sumerian six is a… I don’t even know what this genre is called. It’s like top down, quasi turn based, quasi real time action where you take a group of six operatives and each one has special abilities, and you go to fight the Nazis in World War Two. They are trying to resurrect an ancient demon. And so you’ve got to stop them from helping Hitler win. Win the war through sorcery and black magic. Cool idea. Cool theme. Like it. seen from the top down or isometric perspective. And you can take turns with your character. So like, what happens basically is you go into this map and all the maps are fucking gargantuan.
There’s like a million enemies on each map, lots of buildings, elevation changes, all sorts of stuff. You’ve got objectives on every map. kill certain people, get an item, get to a place. And sometimes you have like multiple levels of objectives, a lot of things you got to check out first before you can do your real objective.
And so the map is populated with enemies. Enemies are just walking around in real time on their own. They all have routines. They all have their paths. They’re walking. They’re all covering each other, keeping sight lines on each other. It’s all very complicated and layered. So you’re in this map where people are just walking around in real time. You’ve got your your team of six. You can move any of them at once. You can move them as a group. And then the trick to this is you can also assign them actions that happen when you kick them off. So let’s say for example, you’ve got, uh, your main operative who is kind of like he can dash, he’s got a gun, he’s got a couple other things you want him to go like attack a guy on the left, but he can’t attack that guy because his guy watching him on the right. If you kill the guy on the left, the guy on the right is going to sound the alarm. The whole thing’s going to go south. So then you have another guy, maybe the guy. There’s one guy that turns into a werebear, uh, and he also has a submachine gun. Submachine gun. Werebear. I mean, that sounds pretty impressive to me. You send that guy over to the right. And so you can key things in a certain way. You can assign actions before they happen. So you can say, okay, guy on the left, I want you to kill this guy. When I push triangle guy on the right, I want you to kill that guy when I push triangle, and then you get everything ready, you get the pieces in place, you make sure everybody’s where they need to be. And then once you’re ready to go, you hit triangle. Everybody does their thing at the same time. And then you can accomplish really challenging tasks. Uh, that would be impossible to just have one person doing at once. And sometimes you can have like three, four, five, even six people doing six different things at the same time. As long as you have planned it out ahead of time, put people in a position and told them what to do. It all goes down. Very nuanced, very, very entertaining. If this all sounds familiar, that’s because this is a literal carbon copy of the formula that was mastered by Mimimi studios who I will eternally be a fan of.
Now, I’ve heard some people say, and I cannot confirm this, but I will be able to, but I’ve heard some people say that a game series called commandos did this before, or at least did kind of part of it before. Mimimi did. I didn’t have any experience with commandos. It was PC only for a really long time, which is probably why I never got around to it. It is on console now and I bought it for PlayStation, I believe. There’s like commandos, there’s a re remake and some DLC. So I’m going to crack into that soon, maybe even this afternoon. And I’ll find out what’s what, because commandos was certainly the earlier game, the first game. But I don’t know how similar it is to what made me me was doing and how similar it is to Sumerian Six. But we’ll find out.
But regardless, um, I think my first experience with this exact kind of gameplay was mimimi’s first one. Um, gosh, what is it? Shadow. No. Shadow of the. Oh, Jesus. Okay. Hold on. I gotta look it up. This is I can’t I can’t misquote it because I love that game. Shadow tactics is what it was. And that had a group of samurai and ninja. That was great game. Loved it. They went on to do Desperados three, which was the same formula but with Cowboys. Loved it. And then they went on to do Shadow Gambit, which was the same formula but with Pirates.
Loved it. Shadow gambit. It’s like the best. It is fucking amazing. In fact, I need to go back and do the DLC. So mimimi did these three games, which are… they’re all like banging masterpieces. If you like this type of gameplay, they are like the absolute tops. They are the best. I love all these games. And then they dissolve their studio. They said making these games is really hard. And they were tired and they needed a break and they quit and they just walked away. I still can’t get over that. I still it still breaks my brain. Take a vacation. Y’all make a different game for a while. come back in six months or something. But like, nope, they bounced. Um, and I don’t blame them. Kind of because making a game like this is really difficult. As we saw with Sumerian six.
I got this game in… I think I got Sumerian six in like February and I liked it a lot. I instantly recognized it as, and I’m literally not even joking, A carbon copy of the mimimi formula. Everything about it is basically essentially the same. I don’t know if anybody from mimimi is on this team. I tried to find out. I put in some requests with PR, but like the results were inconclusive. I don’t know whether they don’t know or didn’t want to say, but if there were people from the mimimi team on Sumerian six, that wouldn’t surprise me a bit because it seems like exactly that. Literally. I’m not even joking. I’m not. It’s exactly same controls, same UI, same systems, same color coding, literally everything same. But since mimimi doesn’t exist anymore, I can’t get mad about it because I love these games and I’m glad that somebody is picking up the torch. So I’m, I’m not going to get mad about it in this case.
Anyway, when I got this game in February, it was pretty buggy, like a lot of animation problems. Um, I had some weird, weird things happening, but more than that, I had a couple of game breaking bugs where some of the abilities of the characters were not able to be used. And if you can’t use the character abilities, then you just really can’t play the game because you need them to do all sorts of things. specifically, there was one part where I would walk into like a power dampening field that was set up by the Nazis to protect their base, and it fucked up the whole game. And I couldn’t keep playing after that. And there’s this other part where, uh, one of the ladies has a bomb that’s really useful because you can take out a bunch of guys at once, you can take out a whole group. And something about the game, like disabled her bomb. I could not activate it.
And so I was down a character and that didn’t work for me. So I put it aside for a while and then PR said they patched it. They weren’t able to like fully reproduce the bug that I had, but they think that it was, I don’t know, something to do something. They figured it out partially and I went back to it like I think a couple weeks ago and it was fixed. It was fixed, the bomb worked. I got the powers back. I could go through the dampening field, no problem. Again, it was all great. So I jump back in. I have now finished the game, rolled credits this morning and I gotta say it’s just Excellent. It is just excellent. I think the mimimi formula is fully intact. And if you’re going to steal, steal from the best and mimimi was the best. and stealing is part and parcel is totally fine because the studio is not there. And I think this kind of gameplay is awesome. I really enjoy it. The levels are huge. It’s really detailed and slow and methodical, but it’s super rewarding when you do pull it off. Like when you see something that looks impossible. Multiple guards covering, multiple guards, covering multiple guards, monsters on the field. Everybody’s looking every way.
How the fuck are you going to get through this? You just don’t know. And then you see an opening. You have an idea. You put your team together, you get the timing right. You pull it off. It just feels amazing. love that feeling. You’re going to have a lot of failures, that is for sure. Um, luckily they have implemented the same fast, quick save system that mimimi had. And if it wasn’t for that system, I think this game would be unplayable because you die so often and you make so many little mistakes. And sometimes it’s just the matter of one pixel or even a fraction of a second. And if you’re off, the whole thing goes down. and so being able to quick save and reload quickly, it just really makes the whole game playable. It makes the experience happen. And I’m glad that they did that. I’ve seen some people who try to get away from the quick saving, and I think it’s a real, real mistake. Uh, the most notable example in my mind is Stone of madness, which I, I, I really am fascinated and intrigued and drawn to the Stone of madness. it’s about a bunch of insane asylum prisoners who are trying to break out of the asylum. And it’s this large level where you have to, like, do these multi-stage escape maneuvers with various things. So I got to play it. I got to play it, I got to get back to it. But they have gotten rid of the quick save on principle. And it just it makes the game so unplayable at times. It makes it so hard to get through and so frustrating. I think they really made a mistake and they did themselves a disservice by getting rid of the quick save. Because if you don’t want to Kwik Save, then don’t. Nothing’s making you do it. But if you want to, if you need it to manage your blood pressure, then I think it’s a good thing. So I’ll come back to the Stone of madness. That’s one of my white whales, I think. Um, but it’s just so fucking frustrating to play.
but again, I think having the Kwik Save here makes it super playable so you can die, retry, die, retry, die retry, and just try many, many different iterations of things. And it really works well. Like the characters, the writing is pretty good, keeps it going. Like this little tale of like World War Two intrigue. I think the characters are fun. I like the Werebear. You have a Laura Croft type character who can fully turn invisible. There is a mad scientist lady who can paralyze people and dissolve their bodies. You’ve got a guy who uses electricity and he can stun whole groups of people. You’ve got a guy who has a arrow that he can fire infinitely, and he can also astral project to, like, confuse people or take control of their minds.
And with all these people together, this wide range of abilities, wide range of powers and wide range of scenarios, it’s a really, really, really rewarding experience. If you like this kind of like incredibly dense, incredibly slow, incredibly methodical and large and difficult process, even on the easiest difficulty, still incredibly hard. Um, but I like it. I think it’s really rewarding. I think it works well and I’m really super happy that they patched it and that I was able to come back to it and finish it. I felt like it was a great experience. I really enjoyed playing it and I just really couldn’t stop once it was in functioning order. So very good stuff.
So time for the review now. Absolutely a recommendation. I think if you like the mimimi formula, you like this type of real time, turn based kind of, I don’t even know actiony blend of stuff. There’s really nothing else quite like it out on the market. So I think it’s good. Um, it still is a little bit buggy. I will say I had a few problems. Nothing game breaking, nothing nearly as bad as as it was before, but it’s a little bit a little bit buggy. But again, these games are incredibly hard to produce, more so than other types of games, I believe because of all the moving parts and all the things you need to take care of here.
So I I’m going to give them some slack. So considering they have really nailed the mimimi formula, which I consider to be pretty close to perfection, they’ve nailed the level of content, they’ve nailed the interesting team dynamics, the writing, the subject, the themes. It’s all pretty great stuff. Sumerian Six doesn’t reinvent the wheel and essentially copies the top-of-class Mimimi formula. However, don’t fix it if it isn’t broken, and the devs do offer some off-the-hook, crazy strong powers. These are a big plus, and I had a ton of fun using them to destroy Nazis. So that’s not a minus to me at all. While it’s not really new in concept or execution, Sumerian Six is done exceptionally well and I had a great time with it — it brings the heat where it needs to bring it, and fans of the genre can consider it a must-play. I’m going to give it an 8.5 with that representing itself as like basically like a high point of its genre.
Sumerian Six is an excellent example of its genre. It is what it wants to be, it does what it needs to do, and it does everything it attempts quite well. It’s a fantastic experience. So for me, a very rock solid 8.5 out of ten for Sumerian six.
Rating: 8.5 out of 10
Disclosures: This game is developed by Artificer and published by Devolver Digital. It is currently available on PC, PS and XB. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the PS5. Approximately 20 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode, and the game was completed. There are no multiplayer modes.
Parents: According to the ESRB, this game is rated M and contains Blood, Language, Use of Drugs, and Violence. The player will inevitably kill hundreds of literal Nazis during the game, but the characters are generally quite small and seen from an overhead perspective, so there’s not much detail or gore. There is some salty language, but as far as I can tell, the only drug use that I noticed was when the scientist, Rosa, uses an ability to stun enemies with an injected chemical. In my view the “M” seems a bit harsh — I’d probably slot it for teens and above.
Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes available in the options.
Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: This game has voice acting but also offers subtitles for all dialogue. Subs can be adjusted and resized. There are no audio cues needed for gameplay, so this title is fully accessible.
Remappable Controls: No, this game’s controls are not remappable. The controls require a bit more finger gymnastics than usual. the L1 brings up the ability selection menu, while the R1 brings up the character selection menu. The d-pad sees heavy use, with each direction handling important functions such as toggling enemy view cones, assigning actions, using the map and — crucially — toggling camera view modes. Otherwise, abilities are triggered with the face buttons. Camera is mapped to the R stick and character movemement is on the L stick. To make a long story short, basically every button on the PS controller is used and some have multiple functions, so there’s a lot to manage.
The post SVG REVIEW Sumerian Six appeared first on Gamecritics.com.
- Security Camera Installation – indoor/outdoor IP CCTV systems & video analytics
- Access Control Installation – key card, fob, biometric & cloud‑based door entry
- Business Security Systems – integrated alarms, surveillance & access control
- Structured Cabling Services – voice, data & fiber infrastructure for new or existing builds
- Video Monitoring Services – 24/7 remote surveillance and analytics monitoring
Author: 360 Technology Group
