Review #643: Dead Cells

 A headless hero ahead of the curve.

 Even before the game found itself mired in an unjust controversy surrounding a plagiarist reviewer I had set my sights on this game. It looked absolutely brilliant, and I'm actually a bit disappointed it took me this long to get to it, since this one is one for the history books. Dead Cells is an indie 2-D metroidvania-ish roguelike dungeon crawler that wears its inspirations on its sleeves but manages to be its own fantastic thing.

 There's not much story to talk about, you are a gooey, wispy like thingie that finds a headless body and does the only thing it can do: Possess it. And thus starts our hero's journey from the sewers into the the King's throne room. There are a bit of story pieces here and there, sometimes, since dungeons are pseudo-randomly regenerated, but it's nothing too deep or interesting. The gameplays is fairly simple: Try to go as deep as you can, collecting Cells from fallen enemies so that you can spend them on permanent upgrades or weapon unlocks to make your time easier on your next attempt, because you'll be dying a lot. And upon dying you'll lose all your Scrolls('levels'), collected Cells(ouch) and whatever equipment you were carrying. Dungeons are pseudo-randomly generated in the sense that the game's engine creates them by joining various different hand-crafted rooms, but each dungeon always has the same exits, for example, the first level will always branch into either the Promenade or the Toxic Sewers, but where the exits are, which weapons you'll find or even the enemy disposition will change on every run. The game is also a bit Metroidvania-ish since specific bosses will drop Runes that will extend your exploration abilities, such as allowing the Headless to run on walls or activate vines. Runes are permanent upgrades, so you don't lose them when you die. On another note, the game is an absolute beauty, while sprites are very simple and lack detail, they are very well animated, and enemies explode in a gorgeous cascade of blood, gibs and gold. It feels fantastic. Not to mention the huge amount of weapon variety which results in a lot of different animations of our headless hero.

 Enemies will randomly drop cells upon defeat, although 'Elites' will always drop a fair amount of cells and bosses and even fairer amount of them. If you can get to any of the exits on any given dungeon you'll be able to spend these cells on Blueprints or, only available after bosses, on the Forge. Blueprints can be found hidden in dungeons or as extremely rare drops from various enemies or bosses, these blueprints, if you manage to get them to the collector in-between dungeons, can then be used to permanently unlock various weapons into the pool of available loot you can find by opening chests or defeating enemies. There are also blueprints for 'Mutations', buffs that you can wear to ease your time, although you can only take up to three of them at the same time, and you can only pick one-by-one after exiting a dungeon. Beyond Blueprints, the Collector will also charge you cells in order to give you perks, such as keeping money every time you die or allowing you to start with random weapons as opposed to the same weak sword and bow every time. That said, there are a ton of different weapons, some being quite useless or situational, and paying the cost of their blueprint means allowing them the chance to appear on your run, much to your chagrin, but, in my opinion, it's all part of the random fun.

 Meanwhile, if you opt to risk carrying your souls into the Forge that comes after the first two bosses, you can invest them into increasing the chance of rarer weapon drops, meaning better buffs or side-effects, such as making enemies explode upon death. Cells aside, there's another important item you should seek: Scrolls. There are various types of scrolls, which will let you increase one stat between either 2 or even the 3 of them: Brutality, Tactics or Survivality. Whichever stat you pick will increaser your health, but it will also increase the strength of the weapons and mutations of that particular stat(Red weapons and mutations increase with Brutality, usually melee weapons, Purple weapons and mutations increase with Tactics, usually bows and traps, while Green weapons and mutations increase with brutality, mostly has to do with mutations but a few weapons share their scaling with Survivality). Dying resets your scrolls back to 1 on each stat. While you'd think of using every scroll you find, it's better if you try to invest everything on a single stat, while giving 2 or 3 points to the other two stats for the initial health bonuses.

 The Headless can equip five pieces of equipment at the same time: Two weapons(Can be both melee, both ranged, one of each or even carry a shield... or two, if you so please) mapped to two face buttons on the controller. You can also equip two grenades/traps on the shoulder buttons. The A button is an evasive roll, B jumps, L uses a flask of healing potion(If you unlocked it with the Collector, ideally your first unlock to be honest) while R is used to pick up equipment or interact with objects. Your two main weapons can be use pretty much freely, although a few ranged weapons have a short cooldown on their ammo, on the other hand grenades and traps have a much longer cooldown, at least most of them. It's not too bad though, you'll have them ready again before you know it. The Headless has one final technique, which is one of the most satisfying things I've ever had in a videogame: The STOMP. pressing down+jump while on air will allow the Headless to stomp into the ground, it deals damage upon impact, how much damage depending on how high was the fall. Nothing, absolutely nothing feels better than stomping enemies and having them explode beneath you. It's glorious.

 One of the best things about the game, besides how addictive it can become, is how good everything feels. Controls are incredibly tight and they are tied to some silky smooth animations, making it a treat to play. There were a very few instances in which the Headless did something I didn't want it to, for example, I was trying to fall below while rolling, but the game would make the Headless cling onto the ledge I just dropped from instead of letting me fall. In all fairness, this happens because the developers included a ton of little mechanics to make platforming as lenient as possible so that combat is always the main focus and what you should be worrying about. And it works pretty well, but sometimes it can prevent you from being the most stylish you could be. That aside, everything in relating to movement and controls is just perfect. It's so good that I always found myself trying new weapons, because they'd have different animations and speeds I'd have to get used to, but it was also fun trying out new things.

 The game is very fun, very short, but very replayable. It will probably take you a few attempts before you reach the final boss, but even then you'll probably have missed a few alternate areas you could've gone through. As a matter of fact, there are two different possible first bosses depending on which route you take, and if you are a bad dude enough you can tackle a few alternate areas right off the bat that have you fighting enemies from the very last dungeon, albeit scaled down in stats. A full run of the game will take you about an hour, but keep in mind I'm the kind of guy that took his time to exterminate every single monster and explore every single nook and cranny every time I played, so if you're going for speed you can probably do it even faster. But whether you slay the final boss or die trying, you'll always feel like you want just one more run, it's incredibly addictive and very rewarding. I absolutely adored this game. After beating the final boss you unlock the ability to increase the difficulty, which makes more Cells drop, may open up new exits(although every single area can be found in Normal mode) and even find a few exclusive blueprints... although enemies become deadlier and there are less health fountains on which to restore your health potions. The difficulty can be increased up to four times, if you are tough enough.

 On another note, the basic game is an absolute blast, but a patch was released that reworked the entire game. I'll admit that I wasn't able to beat the final boss on various tries, but after the patch I've been doing short work of him regularly. A lot of the game got reworked, bosses became more resistant against Ice(A huge exploitable weakness pre-patch) and a lot of nifty cooldown mutations were completely removed(Rather, changed to make them less useful) but bosses were made easier, I think. A new mode was added, 'Pimp my Run' in which you can tweak variables, such as your starting money, starting weapons, which weapons you want to allow to be found during the run, how many health potions you can carry, the rarity of weapons)... but only up to whatever you have unlocked, so you can't just break the game. There's also an upcoming free patch that will add new areas, new weapons and new mechanics, such as alternate costumes(Most of them being alternate colors, but some change the Headless' pauldrons!). This game's future's so bright I need glasses.

 Dead Cells is easily one of the best games I have played on this generation. What developer Twin Motion produced is nothing short of incredible, being able to stand alongside the big boys while having a fraction of their budget, which only goes to show that no amount of pretty graphics can match what good, tight gameplay can accomplish.
10 out of 10