You’d think, for being such a submissive for Dark Souls and its ilk, I’d have known about Mortal Shell as soon as it was announced. However, as I assume most were, I was looking at it with bleary and tempered eyes thinking that we’re riding this rollercoaster once again. So yes, it is a Dark Souls-clone with possibly the most faithful attempt at cloning. Now, the problem with cloning, and I come at this from the perspective of the nation that first successfully cloned a mammal from an adult Somatic cell, is that there are defects.

Somewhere along the way, several bits were ripped out and some of it was replaced with bits of another game. Mortal Shell itself actually means something, unlike several other titles I could name like The Surge (and The Surge 2), Code Vein, and Lords of the Fallen. You play as this ghostly like humanoid that wakes up in a foggy nightmare, surrounded by fallen architecture that perfectly walls you off from escaping the tutorial area. Believe me, you’ll need that tutorial as the main gimmick is your lack of a shield or any specific defense.

Instead, you think back to when Avery Brooks wore red and punched reality TV stars, and you become rock hard. Stiffer than a board, you can tank a hit and possibly one or two after that as well. It is in no way the only gimmick change, but it sure is the only original one to make it through to the final game. At first, it is confusing rewriting your whole brain after several (hundred) Souls-likes to account for this. After a couple of hours though, either you will have broken the TV or broken your habit. It also helps that it can be used in attacks.

This brings me back to why it is called Mortal Shell. As I’ve already suggested, you don’t create your character, you don’t even pick classes. It is like the early years of high school, you are stuck learning the same tripe you have already without any specialist subjects. Instead, you are wearing bodies like shells, almost like that one game about wanting more means of ingress, though without the superficial orcs making it fun. I mean it, you get no choice what so ever in what you do.

You start off with Harros, the most basic and middle ground of the total of four shells. You get a little pat from behind, and are shoved into the world’s most boring swampland. The equivalent of Firelink Shrine might as well be grey paste excreting from the damp mossy walls of the cave you crawl through; Which probably symbolized birth. It doesn’t help that every bit of direction the game will give you is in a vague and bizarre flash either forward or backward from an odd angle.

I know I’m comparing Mortal Shell to Dark Souls a lot. However, when you dress like a pantomime horse, dance around like one, and have an argument in the suit about who should have been the front, you are a pantomime horse. So I have no regret pointing out that when Dark Souls is good, it uses aspiration views in front of you during gameplay. Mortal Shell‘s map design is about as complex as the 1964 Torry manifesto on gay marriage, which is to say it isn’t. It just lacks distinguishable features outside of crossroads. Even then, everything is in a dull muted tone that puts just about everything in a dark green, brown, or grey color pallet.

If you thought Dark Souls was vague with descriptions, just you wait until you’ve been ordered to use something then times before being told the vague lore of picking mushrooms. Whoever thought that was a great idea needs a smack with a bible, maybe then vague mythical storytelling will make sense instead of whatever that is. Different mushrooms will, of course, provide different effects, so I’m not going to pick a manky brown mushroom in a swamp and start chomping down. I’ve heard enough about house painting parties after eating mushrooms, I don’t need that in my life. I already started talking to giant toads.

My point is, some things such as the lutes you pick up don’t become apparent when you take a quiet moment to yourself. It was only after many many hours did I realize why you would want to play a lute in the middle of a swamp under a tree of bats you didn’t notice at first, but once you did, that entire section just became horrible. Then you’ll find jugs full of liquids that will give you negative effects, but unless you know what to look for, you likely won’t what it is doing overall. That’s ignoring that the man that runs the store is a better-kept secret than princess bloody Fiona.

Getting into the areas outside of faux-Firelink were about as well explained and given as much detail as the rest of the game. It was only once I found the fiery forest with a tomb Lara Croft would find my sword in that I started facing something with a slight challenge. That’s where I think the wealth of Dark Souls knowledge comes in. Once you get past re-learning to block and parry, you start chopping through everything around faux-Firelink like butter. What doesn’t help is the dippy-moo with a Noh mask shifting, but nothing else does. The table for upgrading weapons becomes an anvil out of the blue.

What is annoying about all of these comparisons to Dark Souls and its like, is simply how little of an RPG Mortal Shell is. Very little of it turned out to be focused around stamina, and even the most basic concepts of Dark Souls are missing here. It took influence from it, there is no denying that, and it took more than its fair share of copied homework to get across the line. None of which is to say Mortal Shell is bad, it is just another Souls-like in an ocean of the same “close but no banana” attempts each time.

In fact, what made me come across to enjoying it a bit more was the light accessibility in some areas. Being able to scale the hud, scale subtitles, remove looter-shooter-style damage numbers, and reduce camera shake does mean more people can play it. The brightness option is mostly between useless and awful, though I do like being able to remove motion blur in the video options. Which says nothing of the lack of options for locking-on other than automatically switching. That’s great when you have to be so close to someone you can see what they had for breakfast last week in their bum hairs.

Overall, Mortal Shell is Dark Souls by way of Shadow of Mordor by way of every Souls-like. It is not a bad experience, but if you’ve never played a Souls or Souls-like, it isn’t aimed at you. If you have played one, or several, you’ll be left wanting to go back to that comfy FromSoft pillow you snuggle all night long. It is familiar but lacks some of your creature comforts at the end of the day. Think long enough about Avery Brooks and you’ll be hard all night. Switch over to Dark Souls and watch Deep Space Nine in the background and you’ll be hard for a week.

An Xbox One review copy of Mortal Shell was provided by Playstack for this review.

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Mortal Shell

$29.99

7

Score

7.0/10

Pros

• Souls-like combat works well.
• Proves to big something interesting.

Cons

• Couldn't be more indirect if it was an indecisive alzheimer's patient.
• Oddly shallow.