NOT A HERO

Two things annoy me about NOT A HERO, this month’s (well, technically last month’s) challenge from Indie Riot. First off is the all-caps name, which implies that you’re supposed to scream it out. “What are you doing, Cathy?” “NOT A HERO!” “What are you screaming?” “NOT A HERO!” “Um, yea Cathy, we sort of figured that out when after you pissed yourself when that spider crawled on the wall ten feet in front of you.” More annoying is NOT A HERO has an insane amount of potential, and although it can be really fun, it’s nowhere near as good as it could be.

NOT A HERO feels a lot like a mid-late 80s coin-op action title. Not any game in particular (though I did get some Elevator Action vibes from it) but one that would blend in mechanically from that era. Of course, it also has the required-for-indieness gratuitous violence that used to be awesome but is now expected and bordering on passé. And I say that both as a fan of violence and a practitioner of it, much to the dismay of my boyfriend, who is sick of having the whip marks washed out with rubbing alcohol. My point is, I think your average gamer is too desensitized by this point. The novelty of a violent 8-bit game wears off faster than a sneeze. And not the kind of sneeze where you have to roll up a piece of tissue into a spear and wiggle it around your nose to make yourself sneeze, because sometimes that takes a quite a while.

I laughed, then I cringed, then I laughed some more.

Which is not to say the violence in NOT A HERO isn’t awesome. There’s one point where you have to lead Bunnylord (the rabbit-man thing calling the shots) through a level to meet with a guy who responded to his peace-offering by decapitating the cake he presented him, because quirk. When you get the mayor to him, he starts to beat him in a way that’s funny and satisfying. Then it goes on too long and becomes awkward, like the game is trying too hard. THEN it goes on even longer, to the point that it starts being funny again. I love gags like that when they work, because it’s so rare when one is pulled off correctly. While the humor is hit-and-miss, when it works it’s amusing in a way many games with the retro-paint job often fail to grasp. NOT A HERO misses more than hits, but the hits are genuinely funny.

Nobody can accuse NOT A HERO of lacking personality. Or restraint. The humor can be very funny and the violence can be very spectacular. But, as a game, NOT A HERO struggles quite a bit. First off, the cover-based shooting mechanics quickly become boring. Enemies take cover, poke out and shoot. Getting enough quality shots off slows the pace down far too much. The game has a ton of different weapons, so why does the action feel so samey with every new floor of enemies and every new mission objective? Even worse, I can’t imagine a single player making it through the game without giving up on shoot-outs altogether and using the tackle / finishing-move option to dispatch nearly every enemy. It’s faster paced, relatively easy to pull off, and ultimately more satisfying. There’s probably a blowjob joke in there somewhere but after an hour of trying, I couldn’t find it. Anyway, the action initially sounds fine, but when the best option for dealing with the mechanics is to do the stuff that allows you to clear it as fast as possible, you might want to consider if a mistake was made along the line.

And then you hit the parts where you have to wonder if enough play-testing was done. The absolute worst part of NOT A HERO is jumping out windows, which in later stages becomes essential to clearing stages. Some objectives require puzzle-like planning and strategy, so it gets especially annoying to reach the end of a long stage and die because you intend to hop out a window and crash through the one directly below it only to fall to your death for the fifth mother fucking time. When exiting a window, you’ll often want to go through the window below you, but instead the game will launch you straight forward in a free-fall to the death. Even trying to heel-toe it at the base of a window doesn’t work all that great, because you’ll just end up dashing back into the room you just tried to exit. Mind you, many objectives in the game are based around a tight time limit, so having to fight a control mechanic that succeeds and fails almost seemingly at random takes the joy and fairness out. It was as if NOT A HERO was trying to bring the Hokey Pokey back, only it’s more like the Brokey-Croaky. You try to inch out the window, inch back in, and inch back out, do the brokey-croaky as your character falls, that’s when you start to pout.

Imagine your character doing the Goofy “YAAAAAHOOHOOWEEEE” noise as they fall to their death. At least that makes it somewhat tolerable.

If you think my hammering on this window thing seems petty and nit-picky, maybe you’re right. Especially when the rest of the play control isn’t that bad. I mean, other niggling little annoyances happen, like trying to slide out of danger but instead getting stuck in an animation where I’m capping someone with my finishing move and taking cheap damage as a result. But the window thing really sticks out to me because it’s such an essential part of the gameplay and there was no excuse for it to not be done better. Crashing through windows is a fun idea. I push my family out windows all the time and envy them as they roll off our roof and into our poison-oak bushes, because it just looks so damn exciting. And I like the concept and mission objectives for NOT A HERO a lot. The way levels are laid out makes some of them feel like surprisingly deep puzzles. I like puzzles, and it’s rare when a satisfying shooter has them. I’ll agree with other critics that the lack of variety in graphic design can be a bit exhausting, but I played NOT A HERO in shorter sessions, so it took the edge off that a little bit.

All those little control issues that pop up, one big one and several much smaller ones, make me think that NOT A HERO really could have used some more honest feedback from playtesters. To be clear, NOT A HERO is a lot of fun. Even exhilarating at times. That’s why I’m so annoyed by it. I hate games that don’t live up to their fullest potential. Clean up the play control and I think you would have the kind of indie that catches on like wildfire and goes down as something other games should aspire to be. Instead, NOT A HERO is simply a solid, fun title that people will enjoy for a few hours and forget about a week later. I could live with that if I was a cynic looking only for a temporary distraction. As someone who dreams of finding games that maximize their talent to the fullest, I really feel I have no choice here but to award NOT A HERO my seal of approval.

And then shoot it in the kneecap.

And then saw off its pinky fingers with a rusty hacksaw.

And then tie its testicles to a car battery and playfully zap it for a few hours.

And then dip cotton swabs in pepper spray and shove them in its ears.

And then take a smoke break because this torture shit is exhausting.

And then do the old thumb and screw method, because that always looked fun in the movies.

And then introduce it to my pet grizzly bear, Fluffy. Watch out, she’s horny.

And then load a buckshot with pellets of uranium 238 and take out the other knee.

And then make it drink Clamato, because fucking gross.

And then see how many times you can vivisection an arm using only a chainsaw.

Oh don’t get pissy with me, NOT A HERO. You started it!

NOT A HERO was developed by Roll7
Point of Sale: Steam

$12.99 is exploring the viability of running for office on a platform cleaning up the city using old ladies packing heat in the making of this review.

NOT A HERO is Chick-Approved and ranked on the Indie Gamer Chick Leaderboard.