Final Failure

As a general rule of thumb, any game that has the word “Failure” in its name is bound to be not so good.  Imagine if other games did it.  What if Halo Reach had been called Halo Failure?  Who would want to play that?  Or Gears of Failure?  Arkham Failure?  Legend of Failure: Ocarina of Failure?  Those sure sound like loser games to me.  My point is, if you can name your game anything, why name it Final Failure?  Well unless your game is in fact a failure of herculean proportions.  Which this was.  So this whole rant was a complete waste of time.  Sorry.

Final Failure is a side-scrolling shooter that’s kind of like Contra, only sucky.  You choose one of four dudes, each with specific skills, and then you have to platform your way through some of the most soul-crushingly boring levels in gaming history, slowly shooting various bullet sponges and fighting some wretchedly annoying bosses.

There are so many things wrong with this game.  Your characters are practically microscopic.  I’m sure this was done to accommodate having four people play locally, but it was a bad design choice in my opinion.  When the characters are this small, they tend to get lost in the shuffle easier.  I did only get a limited amount of time to try this with local multiplayer because nobody wanted to play while having to squint the entire time like Harry on 3rd Rock from the Sun.

Each character has a different gun and a different special ability, but you need not worry about that.  The only character worth a squirt is the Defender, who’s default weapon is a spread gun.  Everyone and their mother knows that spread guns are the be all and end all of 2D platform-shooters.  Unfortunately this gun, along with every other one, has to pause to reload quite often.  Seriously, can you imagine if they remade Contra like that?  This isn’t Halo or Call of Duty.  It’s a fucking 2D platformer with guns, and you’re making us reload them?  It breaks the flow of the game and leaves your dude wide open to attack.  And he’s got enough problems with that as it is.  All four characters move slow while enemies are speedy and eager to run all over you.

By far the biggest problem is the horrible play control.  There’s no D-Pad mapping, so you’re forced to use the analog stick, which is not actually done in analog.  It makes every movement ultra touchy, as if its on the rag.  Jumping is not responsive either, and that becomes a full-blown pain in the ass in stages that require you to scale up some unreasonably tricky platforms.  Spending a few minutes trying to climb to the top of a mountain only to misstep and fall all the way to the bottom is a proven way to drain all love from your body.  That’s right, this is less a video game and more of a Care Bears villain.

There is absolutely nothing fun about Final Failure.  Even with four players, it’s pitiful.  I know the argument everyone uses is “everything is better with four people!”  Which isn’t always true.  Maybe with just one person the game would be manageable.  You know, if it didn’t suck to begin with.  But with four people it’s more slow, more clunky, and more aggravating.  Sure, you might theoretically kill enemies faster, but that’s kind of irrelevant when there’s always THAT ONE IDIOT who keeps running behind, making everyone wait around for them.  God I hate that little fucker.  Especially when it’s me.

Final Failure was developed by Cobalt270

80 Microsoft Points thought “Final Failure” was the code name for Final Fantasy XII in the making of this review.