When a game’s visual style becomes such a distinct aspect of its personality, it can go one of two ways. You can get a stylish gem like Crazy worldor you can end up with another Drawn to DeathLuckily, Death Wish — the hypnotic sequel to melessthanthree Lucah: Born from a Dream — definitely belongs to the first category.
Create and destroy
Death Wish is a top-down action game with a quirky aesthetic that perfectly complements its shadowy and brooding story. From the very beginning, our hero Christian is seething about his past, his family ties, and the current state of his dystopian world. This ruined landscape comes to life through scribbles and sketches, cobbled together to create a coherent vision that works perfectly with the similarly gritty characters.
As Christian, you’ll jump from screen to screen, facing the threat of menacing enemies known as Nightmares, trying to piece together what happened before and prevent something even more catastrophic from happening. It’s a multi-layered story, fraught with angst and honesty to a fault. It’s relentless in its handling of sensitive topics, especially as it builds to its climactic moments.
Those who played Porn will be familiar with the style presented in Death Wish. Otherwise, there aren’t many things that look like this. It’s like someone took senior original anime character sketches, scanned them directly from Mead’s notebook, and didn’t do a single thing to improve them. And yet somehow it all works.
From the environments to the characters and enemies, everything on screen has a nightmarish feel to it. The unbalanced designs mesh nicely with all the combat effects, which exaggerate sword slashes and bullet explosions to absurd levels. When Christian manages to clear a room of enemies, energetic character art appears on screen. Again, it looks like a teenager’s approximation of what they might consider a “badass.” In the heat of the moment, it does its job and provides a satisfying end to the fight.
Pair and punish
Death Wish would die on the stump if the combat wasn’t engaging. With a handful of interwoven systems to learn and exploit, it ends up being as stimulating and breathtaking as any big-budget character-based action game. To master the skills you’ll need to survive, you’ll need to assign and equip Arias, which serve as your primary means of attack. From there, you can further customize these attacks with modifiers. You can also expand your capabilities through the exploit of Virtues, a circumscribed number of which can be equipped at any given time.
As Christian levels up, there are five main attributes he can spend points on. There’s the standard max HP boost, as well as one that increases overall damage. You can also invest points to augment your max charge and power up Hold Actions—powerful moves you perform by holding down the attack button—raise your mind for more effective Arias, or invest in your Familiars, which can be used to shoot enemies. The more you pay attention to all of these subsystems, and the better you manage your point allocation, the less you’ll sweat in Nightmare’s tougher battles.
All of this action moves quickly, aided by a perfect soundscape. In addition to the ominous, driving music, the sound design is an integral part of everything that happens on screen. Although I wouldn’t go so far as to say Death Wish is unplayable with the sound off, it’s pretty close. There are so many key cues to listen for in conjunction with the typical animations for enemy attacks. Even the parry sound is a clear comma before the following salvo and the final exclamation point of a successful stun.
Sin and penance
When you die, you’re usually reborn at your last grave, but there’s a recent way to punish failure. At the top of the screen, your sin percentage gradually increases from zero to 100 as you move through the world. It’s a very subtle augment, but whenever you die in battle, these numbers add up significantly. If you’re not careful, you’ll soon find yourself in the 20s, 30s, and so on.
Fortunately, there is a way to lower the sin percentage. Getting an S rank in any encounter will lower it by three percent. A rank will lower it by a percent and change it a bit, and below that are steadily diminishing returns. Letting it reach the maximum does not result in Crowd Psychopath 100 the burst of power I was hoping for. After the first time, Christian unlocks an ability that gives him a substantial power boost while also quickly increasing his Sin. Realistically, you can only hold this for a few seconds at a time, but it’s not a bad way to clear out a fight arena if needed.
After that first taste of pure sin, each time you max out will result in a potentially massive regress. Once you hit 100 percent, Christian will have to choose a previous chapter to return to, with each option representing the percentage of sin he had at the time. Even if you choose the latest option, you’ll likely lose a fair amount of progress, which can be a bit depressing. At best, it fits nicely into the established world and its themes, and at worst, it’s a complete momentum killer.
Do it and repeat
I really enjoyed most of my time spent with Death Wishespecially the early hours. However, soon after reaching Track 5, fatigue begins to set in. At this point, the game opens up more, tasking Christian with reconnecting any rapid travel/save locations he might want to exploit, while providing minimal guidance beyond the general gist of what needs to happen next. There’s nothing wrong with that, but the world simply doesn’t lend itself to exploration. The same enemies inhabit the same areas, so you’ll end up fighting repetitive mobs until you finally figure out how to progress. Using this as a grind to lower your Sin level can be beneficial, but if you’re not careful, you’ll eventually run out and find yourself dangerously close to 100% Sin.
Going into the final chapters with a score above 70% is asking for trouble. Since the progress you lose can be significant, the punishment for your sins hurts all the more when you’re so close to the final battle. You can mitigate this a bit by changing the difficulty in the Sin and Punishment categories, but I just found this final stage to be a bit monotonous for my taste.
Despite a few obstacles along the way, there is a lot to love Death Wish. The combat is incredibly tense, the story and presentation are exceptionally ambitious and true, and the mood he creates is entirely his own. Melessthanthree has made a ton of improvements Porn here, including the wise decision to remove the durability meter entirely.
I have no doubt that this will be — and in many cases probably already is — the overwhelming favorite of 2024 for many. It didn’t really hit the mark for me personally, but I won’t soon forget the satisfaction of the skillful parade and the screams of those who sacrificed themselves during Christian’s harrowing journey. Hell, I might even dive in and see how he does on the return trip, but not too soon; the wounds are still fresh.
