Loopmancer

After dying nine times I finally beat Loopmancer‘s first boss. The crawl to get to him was grueling. I had savaged dozens of rank-and-file enemies with a bar stool and a fire axe and a pistol. Often their bodies would comically fly in all directions and spray blood once their health bar was empty. I’d been hit by a few cars, fallen off platforms, or didn’t connect with a jump. At one point the boss’ flying, electrocuted punch inflicted a status effect on me that ticked away at my health until I died.

What finally did him in that time? A throwing axe. About a dozen of them. Each one momentarily stunned the boss after his recovery animation, preventing him from attacking me. What I didn’t expect were three grunts to come in and suddenly help out but somehow I managed.

The victory felt… okay. It was very cheap but I was glad that I could finally see something new that Loopmancer had to offer and finally receive the resource that allowed me to permanently upgrade my character. The thing is, I hadn’t even met the final boss of that opening area.

Loopmancer has been a strange experience. A roguelite that doesn’t progress like one. A gritty cyberpunk cop thriller that has over-the-top voice acting and bad dialog. An action platformer where the jumps and movement don’t always connect. In the places where there’s silver lining, it’s often a bit tattered. But Loopmancer is one of those games that is unique and worthwhile in spite of its flaws, managing to be different even when it doesn’t often excel.

Xiang Zixu is an investigator who recently was in a car accident that killed his daughter, left his wife paralyzed, and lost him his arm. Equipped with an advanced prosthetic, Xiang starts every day investigating the sudden disappearance of a journalist who was last seen interviewing a high-ranking crime lord in Dragon City. When he dies, Xiang awakens in his bed and starts the process over again.

Loopmancer makes a noble attempt to coat itself in a hefty narrative supplemented by countless text logs, branching story paths, and lots of cutscenes. Players will constantly run into icons indicating there is a supplemental piece to read that greatly expands upon the history of the world and its characters. Not only was I impressed with the depth of these bits, I got to a point where I would skip past them just to get into the action because I assumed they would show up elsewhere.

Unsurprisingly, Xiang’s search for the journalist intertwines with the accident that lead to his daughter’s death. The interesting twist here is that developer eBrain Studio allows for moments where players can make choices that alter the path the story takes, feeding into the roguelite nature of constant loops.

And while I appreciate the lengths gone through to provide substance for the time loop and making a fleshed out drama, the execution leaves something to be desired. As interested as I was in this dystopian cyberpunk future, the story frequently got in the way of the action. After death, players have the option to start from the opening level or go back to Xiang’s apartment. At the apartment Xiang can check his investigation board for clues, listen to his answering machine, change clothes, unlock passive upgrades, or pet his cat. Players who want to start with an advantage will always want to go back to Xiang’s apartment because petting that damn cat always grants a permanent boost for that run whether it’s bonus HP, more stamina, or higher ammo capacity.

However, going back to the apartment means then going to the police station where there are usually five or six terminals housing text logs, a couple NPCs to talk to, and the opportunity to potentially have some control over Xiang’s starting equipment. For a roguelite, every advantage is a big deal when you so often start from scratch. Soon enough I learned that petting a cat and running through the hallways of a police station were going to be muscle memory in this game. But then players have to endure load times and, thankfully, skippable cutscenes that simply delay the time to getting to the action.

Of course, before you actually begin another loop in the game I would suggest waiting a few seconds for that car that drops Xiang off to leave so you can scurry to the left and dodge cars that can knock off a fifth of health to acquire another passive bonus that will last that run. Good? Good.

Those opening annoyances are one thing but the game never automatically skips a cutscene that has been seen a dozen times before. After my first death I was informed that certain actions could influence the narrative and the gameplay so I didn’t skip anything at first. But after noticing no change in mid-mission cutscenes I just held down the button to skip them.

Let me be honest, the voice acting in Loopmancer is rough. Xiang’s English voice actor sounds as close to a Troy Baker-alike as you can get, which does not fit the assumed Chinese heritage of the protagonist. Many characters ham it up or just don’t know the difference between subtle and comic. Hell, this is a game where enemies die and you hear a Wilhelm scream, it’s nuts! The writing can be clumsy but what grated on me was the poor localization. The writing is littered with typos and inconsistencies that really take away from both the cutscenes and the text logs players go through. What could have been interpreted as B-movie delivery is taken down another notch because it feels that much cheaper.

I have to applaud eBrain for the sheer amount of text in this game and the efforts made to garner mass appeal. With patches, the typos can be ironed out but the voice acting and writing are probably here to stay. Because of that, Loopmancer‘s narrative will remain just a bit more silly than intended and dull its shine.

These sore spots sting harsher because the world crafted here does have a lot of visually striking detail. Most “zones” players find themselves in are drenched in a color palette to make them distinct. Cityscapes, factories, slums, temples all have a three-dimensional tone despite all the action taking place on a 2.5D plane.

In terms of randomization, Loopmancer often lacks that truly surprising level variety that is spurned by technically simpler games. After playing the opening zone several times, I noticed very little variation. Most of the randomly generated content was whether players would use a grapple hook to get over an obstacle or jump under some platforms and then over others. Because of this, the game’s formula started to bare itself quite openly, leaving itself up for exploitation. Players can guarantee resupplies after specific intervals, be confident that they can race past enemies, and get to a boss after a specific set of screens.

There’s an art in randomly generated content for roguelites and Loopmancer seems to forget that, or its at least being misidentified as a genre it doesn’t really belong in. In Loopmancer, players get a melee weapon, a gun, a piece of tactical equipment, and an ability attached to Xiang’s arm. Xiang has a double jump and can dash around but players must be mindful of the stamina bar. Melee combat and movement is incredibly fast. Hell, most of the game is. Half the time I forgot everything at my disposal. Don’t get hit and Xiang charges up an “overkill” melee attack that does a lot of damage but never seemed to be all that worth it to me. The same applied to the cybernetic abilities of the arm, which after use go on a cooldown.

Strangely, the gun and the tactical equipment felt like their own kind of beasts. After my throwing axe fest with the first mini-boss, I took to shooting him at the other side of the screen because he moved so slowly. Melee attacks are strong and fast but it’s very difficult to gauge when enemies are knocked out of attacks, when they are going to break through Xiang’s blows, or when they will snipe you with ranged weapons. Bosses are ridiculous and mostly inventive but the grunts are so often just incredibly bland to engage with.

I grappled with the game’s difficulty setting because I wanted to feel a challenge and rewarded for overcoming it. While I didn’t play on the game’s hardest difficulty, it still felt absolutely brutal and not organically challenging at all. Switching to Story Mode difficulty for a light experience and then over to the Challenge difficulty almost seems like the most optimal experience for the game. That way, players can engage with the story and if they feel like making things harder, can just go all in. Perhaps that balance will be worked out at a future date.

The only reason to kill anyone and everything in Loopmancer is to collect eCoins that can be used as currency to purchase weapons at in-level shops or deposit into PUT machines. These machines are probably my favorite mechanic of the game as they allow players to permanently bank unlock progress towards weapons and equipment, even if they aren’t that valuable. Know you have a boss you might die to and don’t want to lose all your eCoins? Just put them towards that salted fish melee weapon or that heat rifle. In fact, that was the only sense of progress I had in Loopmancer until I beat that first boss–eek out a bit of progress in those unlocks until the next death.

During levels, players are given specific challenges for that area such as kill a certain amount of enemies or dispatch enemies in specific ways. The rewards are large deposits of eCoins or possibly cores that can be used to upgrade Xiang’s overall power. After getting my first core on the boss defeat I felt a sense of relief as I could finally unlock more HP for Xiang or potentially give him more HP Cola to heal with during a run. For some reason, I went into one of the game’s menus and hit a “Memento” which are story unlocks and was granted more cores. I was shocked that the game hadn’t really emphasized this but was still thankful.

On my subsequent run I felt a bit more powerful, a bit more confident. Yet the loop was eerily similar. Back to Xiang’s house. Back to the HQ. Dodge traffic again. Pray I don’t take too much damage before the boss.

The problem is that Loopmancer doesn’t have those outlandish power gains that are randomly bestowed upon the player by the programming gods. For that first level it’s dinky melee weapons and basic pistols. Nothing is strikingly fresh or unique. No electric bullets and virus-infused katanas. Rarely did a free weapon drop in the middle of a level and almost never did one of those free drops result in a significant boost that opened my eyes to what a “god roll” build might be like. Actually, I don’t think this game really has anything I would call a build, which is a shame.

Roguelites incentivize players to complete rooms and explore in the hopes of granting a passive boost that will cause something unexpected to happen. Loopmancer doesn’t really invite that kind of surprise on the player until later in the game when things start to grow more humdrum. The action is still solid and fast but the method doesn’t change. If you didn’t want the tedium of fighting enemies you could race through to the boss, grind out cores, and just get stronger and hope that upgrades come sooner than later.

Loopmancer wants to be the new sleek, stylish roguelite on the block. Using a veneer of cyberpunk action and frenzied combat, the game often gets by on looks alone. In short bursts it possesses addictive combat that suddenly breaks down when strung together with rudimentary level design and unfulfilling rewards. The narrative has all the charm and trappings of movies so bad they’re good but even that is hindered with frequent breaks in pace. Loopmancer attempts to break out of its genre’s endless cycle but often finds itself shackled to avoidable flaws.