Twin Blades - Review

For several months, Twin Blades from Press Start Studio reluctantly enjoyed the distinction of being the only Xbox Live game to be pulled from the Windows Phone Marketplace. During its absence, it earned something of a cult status as mobile gamers of a sudden realized they were missing out on a hardcore action experience. Now the game is back with light-green zombie claret instead of the original red. Is Twin Blades' return crusade for celebration? Yep, unless yous're a zombie, in which case, stay out of Sis Angelika'south way.

Slice past the intermission for our full review.

Combat nunnery

Twin Blades tells the story of Sis Angelika, a warrior nun. Her hamlet has been overrun by zombies and her 'all-time friend,' a swain nun, kidnapped by the necromancer who is causing the chaos. Father Richiardo, monastery dominate and shopkeeper, places the sole responsibleness for stopping the nefarious sorcerer on Angelika'south shoulders. The storyline is surprisingly mature for a downloadable title and the role player fifty-fifty gets to make a hard choice at the end. Be that as it may, Twin Blades is very much a pure action title with story sequences serving as a reward for reaching sure milestones every at present and then over the grade of the game.

A town in chaos

Twin Blades' action takes identify in a small-scale village and the surrounding wilderness. Angelika starts out inside of the monastery before heading out into nine unique environments spread across the map. She volition visit nigh of these locations multiple times, immigration out zombie infestations equally they appear. Every non-dominate level works the same fashion: motion from left to right, killing a specific number of zombies before you're allowed to move on.

Sister Angelika has to different means to dealing with zombies: her scythe and an assortment of guns. Guns are much safer to use but their armament is limited. To refill it, Angelika simply needs to slash at zombies with the scythe. It's a simple and effective system. Angelika can also unlock an aerial attack in which she dives to the ground blade first. It puts the player uncomfortably close to the zombie hoards, but often stuns them too.

Controls

The combat in Twin Blades is controlled past a virtual stick and buttons.  The two action buttons are for slashing and firing guns. Pressing up on the virtual stick makes Angelika spring. This takes some aligning from players who are used to jumping with a push. The only time pressing upwardly to jump feels natural to me is in i-on-one fighting games. But whatever more than ii virtual buttons on the correct would be harder to keep track of, so it's an understandable pattern decision.

Switching between guns is handled by tapping the gun icon at the top-right of the screen. I wish guns could be inverse while the game is paused as information technology tin can be difficult to switch them on the fly while dealing with the game'south bosses and their zombie minions. Speaking of which, whenever a zombie grabs Angelika, players accept to milk shake the phone violently to free her. This got me some odd looks and comments in public in one case; there should exist an selection to turn off the featherbrained shaking.

Nuns love shopping too!

Immigration levels isn't the only purpose of killing zombies. Zombie hearts are the game's currency. Pocketbook of hearts in-hand, Angelika can return to the monastery and purchase various upgrades for herself and her guns. It's fun building up your character'due south wellness and abilities, simply you never really feel all that strong due to the e'er-increasing power and numbers of the zombie hoard. As for the variety of guns Angelika can wield, the Holy Gun is far and away the best firearm in the game. The others volition just collect grit in the player's armory, except for when they are needed in boss fights.

Twin Blades' bosses are visually impressive and quite challenging. The first, a giant zombie butcher, charges at Angelika while swinging his clever. Information technology can be tough to jump over his strikes due to the hectic nature of the battle and the slightly imprecise nature of jumping with the virtual stick, but he is certainly beatable. The other two boss battles, both sorcerers, play a lot differently equally they take color cycling weak points. Each color is vulnerable to a certain gun, giving the non-Holy weapons some use.

Stunning fine art

Press Outset has imbued Twin Blades with an art style that resembles Japanese animation while remaining distinctive. Angelika's animation is extremely fluid. Zombies are creepy and silly at the same fourth dimension, ofttimes wearing pots on their heads ala Plants vs. Zombies. Twin Blade isn't equally lighthearted as PopCap's magnum opus, even so. Here zombie pots, heads, and torsos go flying as Angelika defeats them, accompanied with spurts of (now) green blood.

The Windows Phone version of Twin Blades features a total of 10 dissimilar environments. Each one is extremely detailed, moody, and atmospheric. My favorite is the level that takes identify beside a lake with a behemothic moon staring down. Outdoor environments have both day and nighttime versions, adding a touch of visual multifariousness. Even still, some animation – maybe scared bystanders or woodland creatures – would have livened them up further.

Repetition of the Dead

In addition to the story mode, Twin Blades too has a survival manner that challenges players to make information technology through 30 zombie-infested levels. Only like the story mode, that ways Angelika will be running through each environment several times. Excluding boss fights, the game play never changes – it'southward always just running from left to right, alternating betwixt slashing and firing guns until no zombies remain.

That repetition is Twin Blades' merely major trouble. No matter how cute the environments are, they go old considering you lot see them and then often. Each level feels identical to the others, likewise. They all contain the same enemies: zombies. Tougher zombies only look and deed slightly different from weaker ones, and then they all run together. At the very least, levels should be more distinctive from each other. Uneven topography would accept helped. Instead of entirely flat levels, a few hills and maybe even a mountain path to climb would profoundly mix things up without requiring much more than piece of work from the programmers and artists.

Achievements

Twin Blades' Achievements don't help it feel whatsoever less repetitive. To get them all, players would need to beat Story and Survival on both Normal and Hard difficulties, for a full of four play throughs. Sure, it'south nice to go more than playtime out of a game, simply 4 play throughs combined with the lack of diversity is a bit excessive. Many games award both the Achievements for Normal and Hard when beating the game on Difficult, a far more convenient solution. Still, none of the Achievements here are besides hard, and that'south a skillful thing. Spend enough fourth dimension on Twin Blades and you'll reap its full 200 GamerScore.

Overall Impression

Twin Blades may not take a ton of variety, but it's still a very solid action title. It'due south fun to chop and smash away at zombies in brusk spurts, and the upgrade organization may have players putting in longer sessions to meliorate their arsenals. Twin Blades' unique story, fantastic art, and haunting atmosphere are easy to love. The toll is also right: it'southward a lot of game for $two.99. Windows Telephone players who missed out on it the start time around shouldn't hesitate to bring together in Sister Angelika'due south fight.

Twin Blades costs $2.99 and there is a free trial. Zombie slayers can grab it here (Zune link) on the Marketplace.

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Source: https://www.windowscentral.com/twin-blades-review

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