Game #911: Stranger Things 3 - The Game

  What the hell did they do to my Steve?!

 The first season of Stranger Things was pretty good, but I felt the series declined in quality with each installment, to the point that I couldn't even force myself to finish the third season, the one in which Stranger Things 3: The Game is based on. Regardless, the game looked appealing, so I gave it a shot.

 It feels and looks like a mobile game, but plays like an old SNES game. And I don't mean that in a bad way, necessarily. The character sprites are very charming, and they were surprisingly faithful with the source material, sure, they skimped on some details and information, but I felt like it was a pretty decent adaptation. I mean, considering the game lets you swap characters at will so that you could play through Hopper and Joyce's adventures with Max and Erica, it's still a decent retelling.

 That said, the brunt of the game is going from point A to point B to point C while murdering a ridiculous amount of Russians and monsters. Oh, yes, murdering adult Russians with the kids never stopped being ridiculous, but hey, it's a game. Besides the main storyline, there are also plenty of side quests, which are pretty much the same thing, gathering stuff from different zones and battling ridiculous amounts of enemies.

 I felt the game at first was super fun, but as with most games with a ton of combat but not a whole lot of rewards... it quickly lost its luster. There are simply too many enemies who can take too much damage before going down. If there was some sort of RPG system it could've made it at least rewarding, and at least you'd grow stronger making combat go down faster. To be fair, you can craft trinkets to up your damage, but it's still not good enough. And sure, you could use a character's energy consuming abilities, but it's much better to save up your energy for Max's healing ability. The last couple of chapters were an unbearable slog. I just wanted the game to end already.

 Now onto the nitpicky.... why is Erica, one of the most annoying characters EVER conceived in a series, playable, but not my girl Robin? Robin was cool, gimme Robin. And Steve has always been my favorite character, but instead of giving him his trademark barbed-wired bat, which was given to Mike, his main attack is... shooting scoops of Ice Cream. Seriously? Is my boy a joke to you? And why is Hopper's main form of attack a punch? He is a cop, give him a gun. But it's flippin' Will the one that gets to shoot with flares. Oh, and characters with ranged attacks are just plain better. Most melee oriented characters are stronger, but they are easily swarmed by enemies. Heck, Dustin inflicts poisonous damage from afar that hurts enemies over time for a short while. Eleven was easily the strongest character, and one of the very few that consistently landed critical hits.

 It was an alright game, but I don't think people that aren't interested in the show will find anything of value here. That said a few refinements would've made it a much more pleasant experience, and I'm sure it's a bit more fun in co-op... provided you can find someone interested in playing this game the whole way through.

 5.0