Livin’ in a Kung-fu paradise.
One of the last things we were able to do at E3 was hit the Devolver Digital party across the street. And since Devolver is a fuckin’ class act, they did their event admittance right. None of this waiting in line with paid kids. You made an appointment to see a demo if you were either of the two allowed, and you were in. Free food, free beer, all class. And Absolver.
We managed to get into the last demo for Absolver on the last day. Good, in that we could cover it; bad in that it meant our demo time was cut in half. Still, since Miles and I are MLG Pro, we were able to truck through in just that amount of time. Which was the minimum for the demo; they’d much rather have had more like an hour to show all of it off.
And it is a spectacle; this is the sort of Kung-fu game people dream of. In a way, it’s similar to Dark Souls, in that it’s a third person action RPG that’s balls hard (git gud, scrub). As a matter of fact, it’s an unbelievably complex game just from what we saw. It’s still hard to explain the incredibly nuanced stance, form, and class system, and that’s not bringing weapons into the picture. But I’ll try anyway.
Stance is obvious; it’s your stance in relation to your currently locked enemy. Forward-left, forward-right, back-left, back-right. Simple enough, but that’s where it gets you. Each stance has, by default, its primary sequence of attacks (⬛), which begin and end in the same stance, but it also has its alternate (▲), which will change your stance.
And a change of stance leads to new primary and alternate attacks. You can equip these as you like in the game proper, or potentially within reason. Out guide had precious little time to explain the menus and what, exactly, you could do in them. Stances can also be changed manually, but it’s a bit more cumbersome that way.
Form is where things get a bit muddy. Your form determines which attacks you can learn and equip, to a degree. It’s possible to become a master and teach forms you develop, or possibly more like a subform, based around the attacks you have equipped to your stances. As I said, he had very little time to explain some of these functions.
Your class, on the other hand, is fairly straightforward. Each class has an ability unique to their personal form which is, presumably, carried into other forms (with the exception of stagger a.k.a. drunken fist which has its own). They’re tied to the right stick; in Miles’ case, it was a directional parry, which opened up counterattack opportunities, whereas mine was slight directional dodges which permitted the same.
Everything from attacks to basic dodges to your class perk uses stamina. in an effort to fight obvious button mashing, there is perfect timing involved. if you launch your next attack with the right timing (as indicated by both a flash on your character and a fishing game-like arrow on the stamina gauge) you combo much more efficiently. It’s the sort of thing, much like changing stances, that you’re meant to just find a groove for as you play.
While our time with the demo was short, I did prove that my kung-fu was stronger than Miles’ by stomping his ass in our duel (3-1, my favor, ‘natch). Though, admittedly, there was one enemy that kicked both of out asses before hand. Honestly, Absolver is a game that begs to be played to understand it.
I’ve done my best, but short of getting a beta key (which they gave to each of us) and playing it, it’s not likely to click. But from what we’ve seen, developer Sloclap is doing things right.
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