Charlie Murder

Ever heard of something called “The Impressive Monkey Test?” Probably not. I invented it just now. But I think the Impressive Monkey Test could be a valuable tool in judging how much raw brainpower a game requires to play. You see, I would be impressed if a monkey could be trained to beat Super Mario Bros. I would be very impressed if a monkey could be trained to play Tetris. Brawlers, on the other hand, I would so not be impressed if a monkey could be trained to play them. They’re games designed for apes, where slapping buttons without finesse is as valid a strategy for winning as mastering combos.  Don’t get me wrong: games for apes can be fun. But generally, games that can be played just as well by both humans and primates tend to get boring pretty quickly.

Charlie Murder is a brawler that probably couldn’t be enjoyed by our simian cousins. It has a lot more going for it than just randomly mashing buttons and moving to the right. There’s a fairly complex item system, leveling up, special skills, lots of hidden stuff, and a quirky punk rock story that kept me interested until the end. But what really sets Charlie Murder apart is that it’s a brawler that’s more about the adventure than the fisticuffs. Yea, I know. Some other brawlers have been doing that lately too. Recent XBLIG/PC title Fist Puncher certainly aimed to be more about the story than the action, but after playing just a little bit of Charlie Murder, I felt Fist Puncher was positively antiquated. The funny thing is, I’ve met people who feel the same way about Charlie Murder after playing Dragon’s Crown.

Yea, this was a tough one for me to play, and inspired my most passed around editorial ever. Then again, I Made a Game with Zombies was also pretty bad for me. The only explanation: SKA Studios wants me dead. After this review, I don’t blame them.

Actually, these last two weeks have been eye-opening to say the least. I figured fans of brawlers would be all for things like experience and level-up systems. In fact, a whole lot of them are not. That’s weird, because having a sense of advancement is pretty much the only thing that kept me going once Charlie Murder grew teeth and became difficult to work with. I guess SKA Studios, the guys behind I Made a Game with Zombies In It, are infamous for games that cross the line from enjoyable to infuriating. I would think such a reputation wouldn’t be a badge of honor. Any moron can frustrate people, a fact I demonstrate on a daily basis with my boyfriend and parents. Being able to hold someone’s attention by means other than a sense of obligation? That takes talent. SKA undoubtedly has talent. I just question whether they’re more interested in their poop-stained “we make hard games” badge.

Early on, Charlie Murder is a joy to play. The enemies are well-balanced and the stages are fun to explore. But it doesn’t take too long to realize that there’s going to be some major problems here. Chief amongst them: Charlie Murder is designed with multiplayer in mind. In solo play, the game ramps up in toughness faster than you can level up. I had to replay multiple stages. That didn’t annoy me so much, because I was stockpiling the best clothing and hocking all the rest for cash. But then I would get to bosses that, without hyperbole, I would spend an hour or longer fighting and making no progress. There was one that had a parasite growing out of his head that spawned a full battalion of little worm things. You couldn’t possibly kill the little fuckers fast enough before more would arise to devour you. This forced me to take a smack and run approach with the boss, all the while drip-feeding myself health refills. After a while, I had finally whittled him down to his last tick of health. To beat this boss (and a few others), you have to finish him with a button-mashing quick time event. For the next ten minutes (felt like much longer), every time i went to do the move, one of the minions would grapple on to me, breaking the killing blow and forcing me to mash a different button to shake it off. Of course, when there’s a small army of baddies that can do that attack, you can shake one off and get caught by another. Bosses become such a clusterfuck because of this. One boss has infinitely respawning enemies that can refill its health from across the room. Kill one and another appears within seconds. Just to be clear, Charlie Murder, you want to be enjoyed, right?

No? Only on your terms you say? Those terms being four-players or bust?

Well what if your terms aren’t an option?

No, I don’t particularly feel like going and fucking myself right now.

Grind? That’s your solution? Grind up my stats to have a fighting chance? That’s a shitty deal. I haven’t avoided a single baddie, and I’ve varied my fighting style to try to win over supporters on your in-game Twitter thing (seriously, that’s how leveling up works). Why is the game not progressing with me? Why am I encountering boss fights where I have to practically carry a buffet with me to avoid dying? Why does it take me several minutes to fight normal baddies? Why on earth would you make your end-game such a tedious, boring, repetitive chore?

There’s a few minigames to break up the same old shit, like a few rhythm games. The last of which lagged on me (single player offline play, mind you), got skippy, and cost me a perfect score.

Fine. I’ll jump on Xbox Live and play with friends and ohhhhh right. We tried that and the connection kept lagging out. And it wasn’t just on me. I tried it with different partners, at home and at my office. During certain fights, it just stopped working. I’m sure this will get patched, but it didn’t help my cause here. Instead, I tried to play local. This was fun. In fact, Charlie Murder is always fun with a party, provided that party isn’t lagging out. But this introduced new problems. I had spent time building up my Chick’s stats and I was NOT going to give that up for anyone. Thus, my friends would jump in and out from the ground floor while I walked around like a fucking super hero. They had no remote shot of playing the levels I hadn’t finished. This forced me to go back and start from the beginning with them. Still fun, but significantly less so. I watched them maliciously brawl with the opening baddies, while I could kill any of them with a single punch. I imagine this is how major leaguers must feel when they attend their children’s tee-ball games.

Oh, there was one funny bit in all this. In order to open up the real final level of Charlie Murder and achieve the “good” ending of the game, you have to gather the parts of an evil Dracula thing. His heart, his eye, his finger nail, his.. this really sounds familiar. Anyway, once you do, you have to equip all five parts before entering the final boss fight. Problem: the ability to get this is dependent fully on you picking the right level-up skill upgrades that allow you to equip more buttons. After reaching level 25, I was able to equip four buttons at most. This was the most offered to me, by the way. If it had given me a chance to have a fifth slot, I would have taken it.

So I cheated: I turned on another controller, gave it the eye (which provided the attributes I figured I would need the least for this fight), and opened up a harder boss fight. Then the unused character got killed while I fought the boss. As he laid there waiting for me to come shock him back to life, he leveled up three times (while dead, mind you) as I spent the next thirty minutes fighting this double-boss thing. Okay, so maybe it’s not that funny, but I thought it was hilarious.

I have two pieces of advice for Charlie Murder. #1: Don’t go into it alone, at all. If friends are not going to be available to you, do not buy this game. The frustration of single player outweighs the fun in a huge way. No thought seems to have been given to balance, to pacing, or to scaling the amount of enemies back to accommodate solo play. #2: If you have friends who you’ll be able to play the game with from start to finish, get this game. For all the bitching I did above, Charlie Murder is an extremely satisfying game.

Despite all the whining above, Charlie Murder is my favorite brawler ever. Nothing remotely close.

It’s like the Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde of games. Well, I mean, no it’s not. There’s already one of those. But you know what I mean. The contrast between the multiplayer experience and the solo game are startling. Alone, Charlie Murder is a sadistically brutal punisher-brawler with bad pacing, unfair design, and frustration from hour two onwards. The end game especially is anything but fun. With friends, it’s a still-difficult but not quite as frustrating romp with charming characters, fun set pieces, and enough variation to keep anyone from getting bored. A few years ago, I would have hated Charlie Murder. I quite enjoyed it now, flaws and all, on account of having friends. And to think, I used to believe the Care Bears were full of shit. It only took a game chalked full of violence, bloodshed, dismemberment, and cannibalism to show that Tenderheart Bear knew what he was talking about all along.

Charlie Murder releases August 14, 2013

Charlie Murder was developed SKA Studios

800 Microsoft Points would make a video of the most horribly violent Charlie Murder four player moments with this song playing in the background if I had such talent in the making of this review.

Charlie Murder is Chick-Approved and will be ranked on the Indie Gamer Chick Leaderboard very soon.

Review copies of Charlie Murder were provided to Indie Gamer Chick.  One was provided to a friend that had no feedback in this review. The other was cashed in by Cathy. At Indie Gamer Chick, we buy our own games. When a game is reviewed before release, a review copy is accepted and a full copy of the game is purchased on release date whether the game is enjoyed or not.  For more on this policy, read the FAQ.