Dark Tower Review by: endings - 3.6/10
More like DORK Tower..When I saw this game on the Vizzed screen, I thought it looked sort of like Ghosts N Goblins. And I wasn't half off. This game seems to be 'inspired' by at least three different games: Most sprites are clearly borrowed from Ghosts N Goblins. The game plays like Bubble Bobble, where you must defeat all foes to continue downward. And the music I think is from a Double Dragon game.
One of the few original characters in the game is the hero; a short, swarthy, stocky (let me see if I can work any other 'S' adjectives in here) silly pugilist who bashes the foes repeatedly with his club until they die. When struck a number of times, the enemies ricochet, any extra foes stuck results in point items dropped, although perhaps the dropped axe gives some vague strength boost. And your heroes (for it can be two-players) look kind of dumb and dorky. Not very cool at all.
While Dark Tower lifts elements (graphics/gameplay/music) from other games, how does it play? Well, pretty badly, actually. This feels like a sub-par 80's arcade game. Surprise, its from the 90's. The biggest issues I had with this wasn't the plagiarism, but the monotonous gameplay and lack of story and much depth.
Lets not beat a dead horse too much longer, lets get to the review of this simple game.
Graphics: 4
What borrowed sprites it uses have been touched up, the big man enemy has his tattoo missing, the red devil enemy has tiny wings. Small touches but the enemies look a bit blurry. Speaking of blurry, your hero character just seems to be wearing a giant tunic and has odd, glowing pupil-less eyes. Is he a troll?
Each stage is a single screen, and are dull, static backgrounds befitting castles or dungeon type scenes. Every ten stages gives a new background - mostly. While the stages go past 30, eventually these backgrounds begin to repeat. The items dropped look at home in other games like Pac Man - they are such staples as green beans, and some fantasy type items like potions and helmets. All look fairly well done.
Sound: 3
As far as I could tell, there is one song for the whole game, and it repeats forever. The sound effects when you strike foes sound pretty good though, as does the flame sound from the purple fire-breathing monster. I'm pretty sure these effects are also lifted from other games (fire = Dig Dug?)
Addictiveness: 2
This game is simple to play, but ultimately gets boring fast. The enemies show some promise of variety early on, but are soon exhausted. There is a mini-boss - read, one type, often repeated.You jump and attack, your enemies do the same for the most part. Its would be pretty tedious to beat this game.
Story: 1
I don't know why we are adventuring. It sort of defeats the purpose of calling it Dark Tower if you are not ascending, but constantly going down. The same foes and tired boss add nothing new, and there are no cutscenes or story telling aides.
Depth: 4
While the club may take several hits to finish a bad guy, your reach is considerable. You can freely jump up through ledges and fall down from them of your own will. The ricochet ability is probably the only novel thing to this game. Sometimes you can hit just one foe, and it will careen into everyone else and beat the stage in record time. Your point bonus items are a lot better when that happens also. Sadly, you do not get new weapons, nor alternate paths or many enemies that require any real strategy.
Difficulty: 3
Since the game is so repetitive, its not hard to go through the motions. Only the boss stages (every 10 levels) gave me any kind of pause, and the simple gameplay was relaxing at first. But there is no meat to this game, and the scant enemies you meet are easily bested time and time again.
Overall: 3.6
Its very easy to play. And its very easy to get bored of this game. It brings little to offer any gamer to spend much time on it, when there are thousands of more polished games out there. This is a novelty, and if it was ever in arcades, must be quite obscure. Other than that, little to see here, folks.
Graphics
4 Sound
3 Addictive
2 Depth
4 Story
1 Difficulty
3
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