Absolum - new video game. Slight review. Some cool references to pop culture.

 Absolum’s references, Easter eggs(kinda?)

I'm putting the ones I remember down here. Can't go searching for stuff b/c too many spoilers out there. Hopefully I won't spoil too much, but something might be. 

• "A Fistful of Crystals", is in reference to Clint Eastwood's A Fistful of Dollars movie. 
• Cinder vs. undead dwarf giant king - “look on my xxxxx and despair!” From LOTR the elf Galadriel. 
• The metal magic rovers… sound like Doctor Who Dalek enemies that say destroy destroy. 
• Rovers also said “i may not be able to see you, but i can smell the magic that taints yourblood” (is that a reference?) then “you will be shredded”… in reference to Shredder from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles arcade I for sure think… they look and move a lot like the metal roving robots (with shock tentacles) from that game. — this happens in the swamp world a lot. 
• Red Forest south south path… raft area. Much like in D&D tower of doom or shadow over mystara arcade game. 
• The mount animal that looks like a dragon... might be a "dracoraptor"... it has animations and especially the fireball attack that look just like the one from the arcade classic, Golden Axe. 

How do you like the shadow under the fb? It's for fairness, eyeballing it. 

Aww, no fireball shadow. Looks nice though. 

• Swamp area, spike worms have the vacuum suction thing… where is that from … was it tmnt or Final Fight? Man that is so familiar. 
• The "grab 'em, hit hit throw" stuff was in Final Fight and Street Fighter 2. Was also in Double Dragon on the NES, so that mighta been first. 
• Cinder's Wall jump from Street Fighter 2 -… and she has the off the wall air vega claw+arms open wide+chest hit attack (Flying Barcelona Attack) from SF2 also. 
• Cinder's (and others?) Dive kick from Street Fighter 3... Yun and Yang were the first I recall at least. Oh wait, TMNT the arcade game had dive kicks of course! Probably something else before that. 

• Cinder's Maximum Spider super move, like Spiderman's from Marvel Super Heroes, the arcade game. 
• Cinder’s Dash into grind attack from… from… so familiar. What the heck is that from? 
• Cinder - “...shiny, my precious” when good loot. LOTR's Gollum's saying.  
• Lizardpeople - the main bad ones look and move a lot like the Lizalfos from the recent Zelda games. 
• The main Necro chick with the giant Dark Souls sword. Sword looks goofy just like in Dark Souls, which got it from the Berserk Manga... but anyway, yeah, it swings (with an effort, a heft) very much like Dark Souls to my eye. 
• Brome floats/levitates like the Lich in D&D TOD and the dashing Green and Black wizards in D&D Shadow Over Mystara. I like it. 
• The Raft Scene is very similar to the one in whichever D&D arcade game that was, TOD or SOM. 
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Slight Review

FUN?

The game is fun, really fun, let's get that straight. It took some adjustments for me, but once I got over the first couple of hours, it started to make more sense (from a gaming/fun perspective). 

TYPE OF GAME?

Beat 'em up or Roguelike? Well I practically grew up on what people now call Beat 'Em Ups. Golden Axe and the sort were like the best thing ever as a kid. I also was fairly heavy into the early years of Blizzard's Diablo 1 and 2, and that's the closest thing (as far as I can tell) to a Rogue-like game that I've played. So my viewpoint is not a typical video game reviewer who has played 500 games already this year. Nope, I save my playtime for only games I stumble upon that are really fun, then I tend to play them heavily for a while. 

So what is this game then? To me, it's a game where you can't quite configure your characters the way you want (like in Diablo)... and you can't quite perfect what you are trying to do, b/c those options don't come the first 20 hours of play. No, you get just a couple of "tools" that are consistent, and the rest is random. So as I play on, I am good with the variety... although my "gotta hone this option" gene is annoyed, it's satisfying the "try out something new" gene and the "is this combination of things so good it's kinda broken in a fun temporary way?" gene. Let's talk about that more.

KINDA BROKEN COMBINATIONS, in a good way?

• Cinder with the triple jump + wind gale thing on her feet or on the enemy. She tends to combo them into the ceiling.  
• Cinder's Skill move, the arm that stretches out... if you get in the right situation, it is really good at comboing bosses into the ceiling by repeating it a lot (needs to be mostly the forward stretching not the diagonal I find). Against the giant sized green goblin(?) boss, I had a couple of times where it was nuking him. 
•  Brome's dash into Drill move (Skill move option you might get) seems really really good. Do that, into the default Skill move (giant exploding globe), repeat forever I think. Oh, I had the Wind Gale yellow rings (probably improved) on the enemies when I did this, and it made it really hard for them to deal with, they kept floating up forever. 
• Dwarf's grenade L2 super move + Big Waves (option) on L2 super + the Reload Mana option. Wow, this is broken. I blew through the entire swamp world and was only stopped by the giant Lizard boss at the end b/c I didn't know what to expect with him. Up until that point, it was very broken. Shoot to the right, reload, shoot to the left, reload... etc. just wherever the enemies are, you'll get 'em and sometimes juggle them with the reload even. Only once or twice it got tricky b/c the enemies (I think the Rogue looking ones in maybe the library area) were so fast they'd run up and get me during a reload. 
• The Necro chick with the giant Dark Souls sword. I have played her the most, despite her voice. If you get her infinite spin on their head with the sword move (skill move in air), that seems really broken. No other combinations needed, so this seems kinda easy to get. Then again, I thought I saw it as the 2nd to last pay-for-with-game-currency upgrade, so... is that the upgrade that stays with you? Must not be permanent, but another chance drop, I'm still not organized there yet. 

DESIGN/LOOK Problems?

I have beef with the divergence from classic D&D, sword and sorcery, and that sort of thing. I don't like mixing genres. I don't like things that just go against the medieval feel of those worlds. So yeah, I would have done a lot of things differently. Also, I like grittier art styles, but this thing does look good overall. OK, enough dancing around the topic, here's what I would have liked to have been done differently:

• Voices. Please no modern voices. No tough guy businessman style, or overly Cockney style (I can't help but get London modern criminal actors out of my head), or overly stereotypical American movie teen speech. This is a tall order, I am sure, but... yeah. 
• I prefer more realistic representation of NPCs. Males have historically for thousands of years held more of the fighter/knight/soldier/warrior type roles. I'm cool with like one or two special for the story types of women... maybe the main heroes, that's believable and fun. When 1/2 of the super tough types are women shaped like men, with giant man arms, it doesn't suit my tastes. Are we looking at bodybuilders from the world of 2025 on Earth? Stop taking me out of the immersion of the game/genre. 
• No guns. No guns. No guns. I don't want blackpowder anything, my medieval fantasy worlds are before guns. 
• Overly cartoony art on many characters. The goofy giant fists + wrists that are half the size of a torso are no good for me. The characters that are 90% torso + arms and 10% legs give me  serious annoyances. 
• Mushroom people monsters are wwaaaayyy goofy. Too goofy for me. 
• I prefer goblins to be 100% evil, but I can deal with this game making them neutral I guess. Well, this game pretty much makes all monster races neutral in the sense they might be good or bad. I prefer to have only purely evil monsters to kill in games myself. 

DESIGN/LOOK Good stuff?

• Backgrounds, plants, floors, buildings, wagons, etc. look really good. 
• I like the goblins a lot, in their look. yeah slightly too cartoony, but overall kinda great. 
• The lizardmen(people?) are fun. Not super gritty, but still neat, just like when they were in Zelda.
• The map looks great. 
• The story is mostly pretty cool. Having to look at a giant pregnant belly every time I die is definitely incentive not to die. Hey, having kids is great and obviously the most important and awesome superpower of us animals in real life. It's disturbing to see the human version of it constantly in a video game though.