DISCLAIMER: This review was written pre-update 1.1. Judging by the changelog it appears the developers listened to a lot of the feedback and improved the game. I will be waiting some time but I will consider replaying the game in the future.
About the Game:
Taken straight from the Steam store description:
"Angels That Kill is a dark, first person adventure game. It tells the story of two men as they uncover the truth behind a murder that has shaken the city. Play through both sides of the story and discover the truth behind the murder."
Essentially, Angels That Walk, attempts to my a noire inspired game with lots of alternate endings with an interesting, and highly explore-able/ replayable, world.
What the game actually is, is nothing but a grayscale "What the fuck do I do simulator". While options appear to be prevalent, figuring out how to activate them/ where to even go is the real challenge behind this game. Because I really want to put things in perspective, and give everyone real insight into what I think, I'm going to spend about as much time on my "review" part as the developers did on this game.
My Thoughts:
Story: Unfortunately there isn't too much to say about this game's story; admittedly I only had the opportunity to explore one ending, due to difficulties which will be later discussed, but the story I experienced was lacking. My biggest gripe with the story is how it's conveyed, which is only through small text dialogues between characters, and by small I mean maximum 2 sentences. Very little story is told through visuals, or other elements, besides brief exposition. While I only explored one ending, I can't imagine the other pathways delivered a better story. Overall, the story was decent, but nothing extraordinary. Simple concept, simple twist, simple ending, nothing really surprising or not expected.
Gameplay: The gameplay is what absolutely kills this game. The gameplay is sluggish, boring, unappealing, and the overall reason I simply cannot be bothered to explore multiple endings and the game's story. Now before I begin, I'm okay with grinding, overcoming difficult obstacles, or progressing through some obscure element of a game to explore additional story or endings of a game, but Angels That Kill's gameplay is so frustrating to me that I simply have no desire to dedicate the time.
So let's actually talk about the gameplay. The game is in the style of walking around and interacting with your environment (via left and right mouse click). You do have an inventory (I never used, nor picked up more than one item) but what really is the nail in the coffin is the game's city. The developers have provided a large, bland, gray city to wander around in. When you receive a quest there is no indication on where to go, what to do, how to do it. To put into perspective, one of the very first objectives in the game is, "See if Sullivan is at his shop", that is it; Sullivan was not mentioned prior nor is really mentioned by any character. Let me just briefly mention here, the city is massive, absolutely way too big and empty for having absolutely zero direction or way to figure out where to go. Eventually, after about 5-10 minutes of wandering around, I did find Sullivan's shop only to find that it's closed and the whole endeavor was pointless, great. However, there is a map in the game, but only one character has it (the detective) and very few places are even marked. Not only are some buildings not marked, but there is no compass or marker to show where you are on the map, and on top of that the map is flat out wrong in some places (the location I noticed was Sullivan's shop and the Pharmacy).
So just to recap, the game has this big, empty, gray, city with random objectives that have zero context and insight on what to do. We have a map that gives very little indication on where places are, and no indication on where your character is. There is no compass which tells what direction I am facing, and it's really hard to figure it out when everything is gray and looks the same. Oh! and did I mention? You move slow as hell, there's a sprint, but it's still slow as hell. So, with all that said, you can imagine why I would have the audacity to say, "I don't give a shit about playing anymore of this game/exploring different endings since the developers obviously didn't give a shit about developing anywhere near a decent game".
Sound: The music was actually quite nice. I didn't really hear much sound effects besides the sound of rain and footsteps. Not really much to say here.
Design: The game consists of gray characters, placed in a gray city, filled with gray blocks, amongst gray streets, in a gray world. However, none of that is necessarily bad; the developers were obviously going for some sort of style, and initially I really liked it. About midway through I did realized one thing, the developers had no fun with the style, in fact, it would be extremely difficult to convince me that the developers went with this style so they didn't have to give a shit about the graphics. Typically, indie companies use a simplistic style so they can focus on the gameplay and story, here they did it because they couldn't be bothered.
Overall: The developer's didn't give a damn and neither should you. The game is less quality then some random free to play game. As I'm writing this I noticed the $15 price tag, the game is not worth your money.
Watch the gameplay and hear more information about the game in the video below and don't forget to subscribe to our channel! We are playing and streaming new games almost every day.
