DeadCore Review

Here’s the most important thing that you should know about DeadCore: if you’re the kind of person who considers themselves a tad impatient, then I advise caution when playing it. I haven’t exactly got the placid temper of a saint, meaning I subsequently found myself biting my fist in rage during parts of the game - especially the final two levels. Don’t get me wrong though, DeadCore is a very good game, it’s just fairly... challenging.

So how to describe it? At its core the game’s a first-person platformer with environmental puzzles and some shooting thrown in. Imagine having the cerebral elements of Portal mixed with the harcore platforming of Super Meat Boy and the twitch gameplay of Quake 3 Arena.

I’m surprised to find that once I started the game I received no information about what the hell was going on. No CGI intro, no voiceover, no pages of text giving me a backstory, nothing. I’m just standing in a roofless room that looks like something out of TRON, while floating above me  - much like the mechanic used in Splinter Cell: Conviction - are my instructions, these read ‘CLIMB TOWER ANSWERS SUMMIT’. All these semi-tutorial messages are written in this broken manner, making you feel as if you’re getting advice on how to play from Yoda. Though it’s always nice to get a game where you must discover hidden ‘logs’ to find out the story; if you don’t care about it then just concentrate on moving forward, or in this case, upwards.

The basic aim is to get to the summit of the impossibly high tower you find yourself in, the higher you get, the more difficult it becomes. The game’s split into five levels, which I found spiked in difficulty quite drastically after level two - by the time I reached the end of level four I was reaching for the valium. One section in particular took me forty-eight deaths before I got the right mixture of timing, skill and pure luck to pass it. When I finally made it to the other side of this fiendish puzzle I literally screamed in delight - which then turned into a scream of horror when I died yet again before reaching the next save point. This kind of thing happens often, you’ll find yourself cursing the distance between these save points at times, but finally reaching one after half an hour of falling to your death is truly a thing of joy.

It’s an attractive looking, atmospheric game, and you certainly get a sense of height from being so far up in the clouds. I also got a great feeling of immersion while playing - on more than one occasion I noticed I was leaning so far forward in my chair that I nearly toppled over, subconsciously imagining that it would help my character get to that ‘just out of reach’ platform.

As DeadCore progresses, more elements to the game appear: there’s the robotic enemies that require shooting to slow them down, the option to take multiple paths, the moving laser walls, and the gravity switches - these bring an entire new dimension to the puzzles, forcing you to do some lateral thinking and wish for a gyroscope.

As well as the collectable story logs there are also ‘sparks’ and music tracks to find, a good addition for the completionists out there. Should you feel like taking a break from the game’s main story mode, then there’s the speedruns to attempt. There are several levels of these - each with an online leaderboard - which are already appearing in some speedrun livestreams. All this gives DeadCore a huge amount of longevity, making its £7.99 price an especially good deal.

Developer 5-Bits Games have created something they can be very proud of. DeadCore is a beautifully designed, well thought-out, fast and fun game. On the negative side there’s the difficulty spike, which will probably be the main problem for some people. There’s also the occasional feeling that luck plays a bigger part in passing certain obstacles more than skill, and maybe having extra levels with the rising difficulty spread out more evenly would have given it extra appeal.

There may be times when DeadCore will drive you to distraction - but no matter how often you fall, get blasted, electrocuted or lasered, you’ll find yourself coming back for ‘just one more try’. I’m now going to put a plaster over the teeth marks on my fist, turn the TV up to hide my profanities, and give it another attempt.