Aces Wild is a side-scrolling beat’em up in the style of Katakijin or Dishwasher: Dead Samurai. Currently not much beyond a demonstration of the gameplay engine, your goal in the recently released demo is simple. Kill everything, run to the next area and then kill everything there. Rinse, Lather, Repeat. The draw here is two-fold; For starters the game is a visual treat, from the way the characters move and fight to the way the terrain tilts as you jump, giving an incredibly natural sense of depth. The other side is that rather than following the sublimely delicious Scary Girl with a dodgy collision detection system, the fighting system is incredibly satisfying and fluid.
The combat functions somewhat similar to the Smash Bros series (I’m pretty sure I don’t need to link that one), where directional controls will unleash different attacks depending on which combination you use and either dodges or dashes are available depending on just how quickly you have to get the hell out of the way of an oncoming attack. The elegant twist here is in the application of the Right Trigger (I should mention I’m using a 360 controller for this. Keyboard controls will be different of course and are covered in the readme!). Normally, or at least normal for this game, when you unleash an attack on an enemy you will launch them in a set direction until they collide with a wall/floor/ceiling in which case they’ll rebound for another gratuitous beating.
However if you hold down the trigger whilst attacking it adds a kind of backspin to the attack, which means when they collide with an obstacle they will cling to it for a moment, meaning they only slightly rebound enough so they hover in roughly the position they hit. This suddenly opens a whole variety of attack options, where usually the Down+Punch would smash the enemy into the ground and send them flying upwards as a launcher, instead the R-Trigger can be applied so the enemy dramatically smashes into the ground and hovers for a moment allowing you to instantly continue a combo, either charging and unleashing an up+punch launcher or another form of combination (Diagonal attacks being my favourite finishers for sure).
It is still a little off at times given that there are a number of infinite combos the enemy can’t break out of, the voice acting whilst welcome can be somewhat grating as is and when there’s a large group of ninja to fight it is almost impossible to break through their defense/constant onslaught. As it is really just an early peek at the game these are understandable and acknowledged by the games creator in the Feedback thread, so if there are any queries or criticisms be sure to make them there so that hopefully any major issues can be addressed. As it stands I think what’s there is pretty great, and I’m thoroughly looking forward to any future builds of the title for if nothing else it illuminated just how short sighted I was being in the past. Punching people in the face isn’t fun.
Uppercutting someone into the ceiling ten times in four seconds is.