Reservoir Dogs: Bloody Days barking at May 18th
More interesting than expected
Top-down heister Reservoir Dogs: Bloody Days [official site] will launch on May 18th, says a new trailer. I'm not swayed by its licensed Tarantino cladding -- if anything, I find it offputting -- but our Adam enjoyed the preview version he played and he's a sensible lad. I'm curious. Here, see a bit of its time-rewinding tactical action in this trailer:
No, the heisters don't look like the moviemen. No, it doesn't capture that Tarantino cool. Yes, its failed attempt to is a bit offputting. But! That's not critical! As Adam wrote:
"Right at the top of this article, I said that a license is often a veil to hide tired design. Here, there's a clever design and my concern is that the license veils that as well. Who would expect a Reservoir Dogs game to be using clever tactical mechanics? I certainly wasn't. At best, I figured, it'd be nineties Hotline Miami. Instead, it's sort of turn-based real-time single-player co-op Hotline Miami."
Players control a squad of three Doggos one-at-a-time in slices of real-ish time, see. They move in slices of real time (as long as you please) but history is only truly settled when all three characters have lived through a particular slice. This is simply done by pressing space. Adam sez:
"That's the key to the entire game. As soon as you press it, you move to the next character in line and time rewinds to the beginning of Mr Blonde's 'turn'. These turns aren't discrete things. You might control Blonde for fifteen seconds before hitting space, in which case you'll have control of the next character for that same passage of time. Blonde repeats his actions exactly as they were the first time around, and you use the second character to support him. And then, when you catch up to real time, the clock rewinds again and you figure out what the third character should be doing during that fifteen second period."
Cursor*100 and whatnot but with guns. And subsequent turns in each slice can muff it up.
"Enemies will react to characters who wander into their line of sight, interrupting the path set by previous characters. So if Blonde manages to lure two cops out of hiding, shoots them both and then hits rewind, his perfect plan can actually be undone by his buddies if they are spotted by those cops, who might then deviate from the path Blonde set them on and 'accidentally' dodge the bullets. The whole system works so well because it can make you feel like a genius, your team covering one another and firing in controlled bursts that always hit their target, but it can also create marvelous calamities."
Do go read the rest.
May 18th. I'm interested.