Speed Brawl & Tharsis Are Free On Epic

This was a week and a half: Monday, David had an article on the latest significant Steam updates, and Cameron detailed the Star Wars: KOTOR Remake announcement. Tuesday, Epic and Apple won their cases against each other, so it was basically a draw. Wednesday, Dying Light 2 was delayed again, Apex Legends‘ Rampart got her heirloom, and Darkest Dungeon 2 will be going into early access very soon. Thursday, Battlefield 2042 was delayed to later in the month. Now we’re wrapping up a week of stress.

Onto this week’s Epic Games Store double-bill that is a sight for sore eyes at the end of a long week: Tharsis and Speed Brawl. Most recently, I’ve been seeing more and more social media things, I’m down with the kidz (yeah, with a Z), and one of the common things that were popular “a long time ago, grandad” according to a 12-year-old is the “tell me X without telling X.” Speed Brawl is very much the embodiment of that, as it is “Tell me the designers grew up in the 80s without telling they grew up in the 80s.” It is a side-scrolling brawler that is very pretty in the same frame of the anime/Saturday morning cartoons style that was popular at the time.

I don’t have anything particularly bad about Speed Brawl to complain about, other than the typical problems I have with games that immediately put you into gameplay. I have two monitors in front of me, I’d like to put the game into either windowed mode to move the game over or decide between which monitor it is on. I don’t care if I’m able to do this in the style of Unity, before the game even launches proper, or if I’m able to do it in the main menu. At best it seems like an outdated system and at worst it is putting style over the quality of life. Once again, it really is not an issue solely with Speed Brawl, but it is an issue with the game overall.

Tharsis is actually the one I was excited about because, as you may have slightly noticed if you’ve read enough from me, I like space! Not just the 2-meter rule we’ve had to employ lately. The big black void that we’re endlessly falling through as we continuously ponder the meaning of life, cheese, love, Hull, and the story of a FromSoft game without the Wiki. Tharsis is a game that has a premise that hits all the soft moldable bits of my brain and has me scratching the back of my ear with my foot. The game has cannibalism, moral choices, space, unforgiving, interesting gameplay, and gameplay is informed by what little story there is.

The problem stems from the short amount of time I’ve been able to put into it. In the early game, you are tied to the story a little too much. Even the tutorial is a little too handsy when the point should be learning the gameplay mechanics. In the space of about 20-minutes, you are given every bit of UI and mechanic you’ll ever need, but you are given little to no time to play around or test something. For example, the central mechanic is based around dice and the “random” chance you have, as I had a 5 turn into a 4 out of nowhere later on. However, you also have re-rolls, module effects, hazards, research, and class effects. I’d argue that you are given too many tools, still have the story playing out, and have too little time to understand it before you will 100% die.

Comparably, I do prefer Tharsis more-so from the short amount of time I’ve had with both, but I also have innumerable concerns with it because of that. For the most part, it is that tutorial, which I feel could have paced itself adequately to teach the importance of individual mechanics. If I had more time, I’d probably be putting that into Tharsis simply for gameplay, but I’d turn to Speed Brawl for the gorgeous illustration in that fun, colorful, and anime/cartoon style. If there is anything about Speed Brawl‘s gameplay that can be said it is that while the attacks don’t feel impactful, they are flashy.

All this week, you can pick up Tharsis and Speed Brawl on the Epic Games Store until Thursday the 23rd. Sadly, I don’t have much exciting news when it comes to next week’s game, as it is a repeat of what we’ve covered before. I’ve said time and time again, the controls of The Escapists on console are the only time I’ve regretted any purchase of a game. Only because WWE 2K Battlegrounds was provided by the publisher, Tomb Raider (2013) and Tony Hawk’s Project 8 were dirt cheap, and inFamous: Second Son is at least pretty at times. Despite this, the PC port at least has somewhat sensible controls, and I enjoy it when I escape from HMP Slade.