That NoReload Heroes is a party game through and through, I can tell, and not because I’m very social.
For one it’s teeming with neon, the sort that keeps you up at night red-eyed, which I imagine is very characteristic of a party. You also can’t go into it alone since it’s purely local/online co-operative multiplayer, so there’s that.
More importantly NoReload Heroes claims that it comes with a five-second learning curve, the average attention span of the modern party-person, and apparently only requires a couple of buttons to get involved.
There’s no reloading weapons either, all of which means the rest of your fingers will remain free for the more important party tasks à la holding plates, drinks and throwing preposterous hand signs for selfies.
And once you’ve attended to those issues you don’t even have to worry about awkward silences since 70-odd weapons, close to 50 different kinds of enemies/bosses that you’ll never meet all-at-once, and randomly generated levels make for a different game-play experience each time. Stupid Stupid Games have made sure of that.
Finally just so you have something to talk about at said parties, the Powerpuff Girls-like narrative has four distinct neon personalities creating an A.I. in the name of world peace. All was supposed to go well in this realm of magic/tech, a launch party was planned, before the robot decided to make plans of its own.
Simple, social, and something I don’t see myself playing anytime soon. Although it’s worth noting that the game raked up a 78% in up-votes on Square Enix’s Collective and has been confirmed for the Nintendo Switch at least with a PS4/Xbox One release imminent.
I’m however more so intrigued by Johnny Graves, also a twin-stick shooter and the Helsinki based development studio’s debut IP, that has one freelancer embroiled in a civil war between Hell’s warring families under the streets of a 1979 Manhattan.
It’s grim dark-fantasy looks like an ode to Max Payne of old but anyway, both NoReload Heroes and Johnny Graves are available on Steam.
