A Shot of Twin-Stick Action and Frustration
The Xbox Game Pass subscription scheme has been, in my humble opinion, a magnificent success. Yes, there are arguments about the annual and monthly cost, but for me, the games that we get to play are usually top notch.
You notice I say “Usually”, yeah? This leads me neatly to the subject of this particular review, a game called Brews & Bastards from Mune Studio. Excusing the bad language, this one is billed as “an intoxicating twin stick shooter”. Now, being partial to a bit of twin stickery (I really hope that isn’t a euphemism for something) I decided to cast my beady eye over the action on offer.
The Quest for the Brew Stone
Starting with the narrative side of things, and whilst a story isn’t vital, since the development team have made an effort to craft one, I’ll give a brief synopsis. We are patrons of the Muneshine Tavern, and the source of all the alcohol in the place, the mythical Brew Stone, has been stolen by a bunch of, well, bastards! We have to go into the depths under the tavern on a quest to recover the fabled Stone, and obviously shoot anything and everything that gets in the way. And that’s about it, really!
From there we have the presentation of the game, and the news here is pretty good. Brews & Bastards is presented from the traditional top down three quarter view for the most part, however other viewpoints are forced upon you at certain points in the game, such as a top down view of the action, and the camera is usually pretty good at showing us what is happening. There are some issues though, mostly with the camera in multiplayer mode, as it seems to zoom out a certain amount in order to accommodate the other players, but once it reaches its limit, it is possible for the second player to vanish off the screen. In a couch co-op game, this does require a bit of an adjustment, as you can imagine.
Other than that, the enemies and characters that we can play as are all well rounded and look very good. The enemies do get a bit boring after a while, being largely cookie cutter in style, but they make up for it by swarming us at every opportunity. With that in mind, they do at least fulfill their basic purpose.
The sound of the game is also pretty good, with some decent voice acting to be seen, especially from the narrator, who does a cracking job explaining what we are doing and why. Other than that, the usual kind of shooting, fighting and exploding sound effects are all present and correct, and so I feel we can give the presentation overall a tick.
Solid Shooting and Flawed Platforming
How about the action, the intoxicating twin stick shootery? Well, Brews & Bastards is very much a game of two halves: the shooting bit, which works really well, and the platforming bits, which really don’t.
A Frustrating Co-op Save System
First of all, I have to address the elephant in the room – the co-op system that the game has adopted. You see, most games of this type, if they have a couch co-op mode, have a kind of “drop in, drop out” system in place. Not this one, however. There seems to only be one save file in the game, and you can have it either as a single player, or as a multiplayer – if you want to change the way you play, you have to start a new game, which erases your progress so far. This is really stupid, not to put too fine a point on it, and ruins what is otherwise something that is extremely promising.
Imprecise Dashes
From there, we have the problem of the platforming; something that is badly designed. The only way to cross gaps in the scenery is to dash, and of course, the dash has a fixed length. The issue comes from the fact that the distances that we have to cover vary wildly, making it all too easy to dash over the platform that we are trying to land on. Even my son, who is a demon at these sorts of games, was complaining about how you need to rub your lucky rabbit’s foot before attempting a dash, and this shows that it wasn’t just me and my aging reflexes!
The actual twin stick action is very good though, and I have to give a grudging tip of the hat to the boss fights, which are well thought out and have interesting mechanics included. I’m not going to say any more about the particular fights, as figuring out what to do is part of the fun, but while we are shooting and upgrading our various abilities, the game is capable of providing a great deal of fun. Gaining new abilities and keeping on top of upgrades is a bit of a challenge, as we need to build ourselves a good character in order to stay alive: more range, more power, more health? Which way should we go?
An Average Experience Bolstered by Game Pass
So, in conclusion, Brews & Bastards is both good and bad. The actual shooting action is hugely enjoyable, but the platforming aspects and – frankly, stupid – multiplayer system weigh the scale down more towards the bad side.
It is a shame, and with a bit more love this could have been a contender, but for now, Brews & Bastards is very much the definition of “average”.
If you’re playing on Game Pass though…
Important Links
Descend, Drink, Destroy – Brews & Bastards is an Intoxicating New Play Anywhere Dungeon Crawler – https://www.thexboxhub.com/descend-drink-destroy-brews-bastards-is-an-intoxicating-new-play-anywhere-dungeon-crawler/
Download Brews & Bastards from the Xbox Store – https://www.xbox.com/en-GB/games/store/brews-bastards/9PPR10S4JNLV/0010
