Day 94 - Blaster Meltdown
Shooter, Immersive Sim, Contains DOOM ·
Sam’s Take:
As you may have been able to figure out from my last few reviews, I’m a big fan of the original Doom. I think the level design of the first two chapters hold up extremely well today, and I think it has better and more intuitive resource management than most survival horror games. Blaster Meltdown is obviously very inspired by Doom (just look at that title font), but it has a few key differences that set it apart in a way that unfortunately kills the game’s pace.
Instead of using ammo, Blaster Meltdown has an overcharge system. The more you shoot, the higher your overhead bar goes. If it maxes out you die. The twist is getting hit by enemies also fills up your overhead bar, so shooting basically costs health, and getting hit makes you lose ammo. Because this bar slowly goes down over time, it turns optimal play into standing and waiting before killing each enemy while you get your health back.
The other issue is that only one enemy type (besides the final boss) can shoot you, the rest all have to get into melee range. This combined with the low agro range and the wide open spaces leads to a lot of sniping from fifty miles away where the enemies could never hope to reach you. That way you can shoot slowly, conserving health, while also being in no danger of getting hit.
Basically every decision in this game causes the player to play slowly, and you can win the game without being hit fairly easily. You have to make the choice to have fun by sacrificing optimal play, which isn’t what you want from a Doom like game. Doom uses ambushes and enemies around corners to force you into close range shootouts with full armies at once, forcing you to strafe around desperately in a ballet of dodging and murder. Blaster Master turns you into that asshole sniper spawn camper in Call of Duty.
This was going to be my full review of Blaster Meltdown… until I saw the leaderboard.
I looked at my time, and it was in the ballpark. If I hadn’t gotten a penalty for not killing every enemy, I would actually have been on the board. So I thought, “why not” and booted the game back up. Suddenly, the game was fun. Being forced to move fast kept me constantly on the edge of death. Every bullet was suddenly an actual risk, a balance between the clock and my life. I zoomed past enemies, turned around to kill while backpedaling… I was having fun.
It made me wish that the time was somehow incorporated into the game. Doom also keeps time, but it’s very fun and challenging even without it. Not every game can be as good as Doom, but there is fun to be had with Blaster Meltdown if you go for the speedrun. Which I did… AND I AM THE TOP RUNNER OF THE GAME BAYBEEEE
I think it’d be hilarious if anyone reading this downloaded and beat my score. The fact that the leaderboard is manually updated on a Google Doc is so rad. Seriously if you beat me score, post it and let me know, we’ll go back and forth on this shit.
I don’t know how Blaster Meltdown could naturally work a timer into its gameplay, other than just having you lose after a certain time, but that feels cheap. The way it is now, you kind of need the external force of a timer to pair optimization with fun, but I’m glad I gave this game another chance and tried to play fast.
ALSO I’M GOD GAMER SPONSOR ME NORD VPN!
Recommend: I want 100 people submitting times to this poor fool, let’s go people.
Replay Percentage Chance: 100% if my score gets beaten by y’all, 0% otherwise
Time Played: 30 Minutes
Skeeter’s Take:
Mario Kart: Doom Edition is coming along nicely.
I raced through the whole level trying to beat Sam’s time and reach the leaderboard only to have Sam inform me that each enemy you don’t kill adds towards the total time…
I’m still a fake and trash gamer. Raid: Shadow Legends sponsor me!
Recommend: Yeah
Replay Percentage Chance: 2%
Time Played: 10 Minutes
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