Superbrothers, 20XX, & Barony Free On Epic

I remember the days when I’d write four news articles a day, this week we covered four news stories; COVID-19 is hitting news hard. Monday, I spoke about the latest “loot” and game additions to Twitch Prime, while David spoke about Batman‘s sales figures. Tuesday, I spoke about S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2‘s trailer being nothing more than a target render, and the Xbox Showcase featuring very little gameplay. Then on Wednesday, I quickly spoke about skating to ska, rap, punk, and so on in Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1 + 2. Though I often leave this opening paragraph to the news that should be highlighted, I also want to highlight Dmitry’s editorial on Ubisoft from yesterday.

Onto this week’s triple-bill of games for the Epic Games Store, starting with the most annoyingly named one. Superbrothers: Sword and Sworcery EP is an experimental game from the developers behind that JETT thing from the PlayStation 5 reveal. Now, that’s all that I have to say that’s nice about Superbrothers. It is a rather ponderous game trying to tell a story that you already know by now and on the wrong platform for its central mechanic. In short, Twitter (TikBook, Instaface, and Snapgram too) is bad, so here is a college theory essay on that slowly told to you. Oh, and it a very fast port of a mobile phone game.

No, I’m not joking. I don’t have time to be told “social media is bad, isn’t it?” I run this site’s Twitter. I research all the nonsense we cover, and it turns out doing that can lead you to the understanding that social media is a cesspit of bigotry. I’m sure most people know that. I’m also sure, when someone sees “Tap” in a game, they can understand to poke their finger where that word sits on the screen. Now, I don’t know about you, but I don’t do a lot of touchscreen gaming on my PC, as I have a perfectly capable mouse, keyboard, multiple controllers, voice commands, and USBs to lick sexually. I don’t like Superbrothers for its pretentiousness and dull port.

Next up is 20XX, a side-scrolling game with a rather heavy Mega Man action-platformer feel to it. Though, it does bring one thing Mega Man “lacks” to some, roguelike/lite elements. 20XX is set up in less than two minutes: The city is on fire, and Nina (Lady ham sandwich) and Ace (Gentleman sausage) are the only ones to save the world from the robot dragon setting fire to everything. The thing is, the gameplay is where I find myself at a loss of what to say. It’s not bad but it’s not jaw-dropping either. If you’re looking for a Mega Man-style roguelike/lite this might do it, but I’d rather suggest you play Neon Abyss.

The final of the three is another roguelike/lite, though this time it is one that is 3D and pixel-art based. Barony is the answer to the question no one was asking: What would happen if System Shock was a medieval dungeon crawling roguelike/lite RPG that you didn’t want to play? Lacking a sense of reasonable UI, a sense of direction, and a lack of quick, fun action-gameplay, I don’t want to give it a shot in the first place.

Admittedly, firing two roguelike/lites and a slow story I don’t care about at my face wasn’t a good start. I’m tired of two of them, and the third I can’t get behind with a lack of sensible controls. It is one of those weeks where I don’t think highly of anything Epic had picked, and that’s what I want to emphasize, it is all my opinion.

Superbrothers: Sword and Sworcery EP, 20XX, and Barony are all available throughout this week until Thursday, August 6th. Swiftly moving onto what I will be praising to the heavens next week, we’re (at the time of writing) only covering one game and what a game it is. Wilmot’s Warehouse is a fantastic little game about organizing a warehouse, of course. A game about being tidy, organized, and well-versed in what you are looking for and where you stored it. Expect me to spill glee all over that one next week.