Dead Cells

During my second part on Dead Cells, I reached the last level by being certain of having understood it. 63 tries later, when I finally manage to kill the boss, I'm 100% sure I'm just starting to understand the deep nuances of Motion Twin's incredible platform and action game.

Dead Cells is a true triumph in its conception; the bowels of its levels with dynamic decorations and beautifully illustrated, its impressive set of weapons, its revolutionary gadgets and its sense of movement merge in a captivating loop. It is so motivating that even after tens of hours of play in this fortress, I still manage to discover and devour new passages.

Choice and consequences

The heart of Dead Cells is its commitment to risk and the reward it provides. As it stands, we embody a decapitated and resuscitated prisoner for an unknown reason in order to navigate a dozen beautifully detailed levels - even if they are procedurally generated - or die to use what you have learned and collected in order to go even further next time. This loop is at the heart of what makes advancement in Dead Cells so special. Each new area you discover, each new artifact, each new weapon or skill you learn, stimulates that rewarding, bittersweet feeling as you remove the veil of mystery surrounding the game.

The placement and order of levels in Dead Cells are like an unchanging skeleton, but the level design and positions of enemies and objects are constantly changing, and turn out to be the blood flowing through its veins. This is what makes each test different enough to motivate and surprise you, while challenging the notion of hoping to have seen everything after traveling the areas a dozen times. You just don't know what you're going to find, because it could be a huge supply of equipment coming in at the right time, as the next test, a new shiny toy will pop up so you can shine with the Collector.

And even if it can be painful to say goodbye to these perfect turrets that have allowed you to progress more than ever - those that set your victims on fire by doing twice as much damage - or in the tens of thousands of gold collected, the real progression comes from the unlocking of buffs, skills and weapons between each try which never disappear, no matter how often you die in these old sewers.

Through this constant repetition, where you would be trapped in a ghost train, you collect money, blueprints for new items, and cells that you can then spend to unlock blueprints and upgrades for future use. Each element improving your power is good to take, as if you were a snowball hitting the slope while being unstoppable.

Fast like a demon

The most incredible moment when Dead Cells really shines is in its running, jumping, dodging and hitting system. In his dungeon that we are traversing, there is something enjoyable in the fact of moving and attacking quickly, which quickly outweighs the caution that you must have and that can therefore make you die.

The subtle design of Motion Twin takes you through environments in an ingenious way. You are then rewarded during your multiple attacks by an increased movement speed allowing you to continue to propel yourself forward. You only take damage when they attack you, so you can get into them, giving you a sense of security even in the face of deadly and deadly enemies. If you're smart enough, move fast enough, or jump precisely enough, you're untouchable. It should be noted that this type of lightning attack is where I have sometimes seen some drop in framerate on all platforms, often in the middle of half a dozen enemies, and most often on Nintendo Switch. But even if it's annoying, progress has never been a problem.

The movements and battles of Dead Cells encourage you to make every effort to go further. These two elements are made so that you reuse them dozens of times, releasing small - albeit significant - fragments into the wide range of skills with each new artifact you earn. Once you've unlocked all of the skillfully learned skills of a Metroid, you'll be able to move freely through the darkest corners of the game to uncover its history and hidden references in secret areas.

There is a real interest in exploring the most secret areas of Dead Cells because you will unlock more powerful elements than you can have at the start of the game. Finding a rune in the acidic pits of toxic sewers has changed the start of my next test. I had access to much of the new equipment that allowed me to access alternate locations and routes that were previously inaccessible. There was almost a rush to die because it meant I could go back in the first few minutes of my run to find out something I couldn't do before. This feeling lasts with each new artifact, and even more after discovering what is hidden beyond the final boss.

Always improve

The true diversity of each run comes from an excellent set of choices as to how the game works every minute. Perhaps you will quickly pass certain zones with the fire of your sword - you will then be rewarded thanks to the doors locked with a stopwatch. Or maybe you will methodically cross Dead Cells using ranged weapons, traps and turrets to safely pierce, poison, burn or shred enemies, or explore every inch of each level to find treasures. You will then be stronger thanks to that.

These play styles can also be changed on the fly using Dead Cells' intelligent system of collecting Scrolls of Power. At first you are weak and fragile, but when you collect these scrolls, you have a choice depending on your playing style and your items. The trap is to improve only one aspect of the skills and associated weapons (improving your maximum health in the process).

The more parchment you use in a single aspect, the less life you gain, so if you want to be a safe bloodthirsty warrior, it's wise to vary your use of parchments. However, this means that you are not particularly powerful in a set of specific objects, risking that your damage will then not be sufficient to mitigate that of the enemies always more numerous in the last levels. I like the fact that Dead Cells lets us experiment freely, without knowing how it will go. Your starting weapons, the items you pick up, and their modifiers are always different. This keeps a global improvisation.

After all these tests, all these ploys, I realized that it was not always possible to go to the end of the road. My first 10 runs in Dead Cells were aimed directly at the final boss, but I quickly realized that spending more than an hour on the file to die immediately because I was not sufficiently prepared was a waste of time. Once I understood that, my strategy was to find plans to unlock new toys for certain runs, while unlocking items and upgrades. And from time to time, I would rush like crazy without being afraid of dying to explore as much as possible.

And to dramatically change the way you play, you can count on a daily dungeon which is outside the main campaign, and which offers you a map with random elements challenging you to know how long you will succeed in killing the boss. And, like everything in Dead Cells, the rewards in this mode are permanent (plans). These daily challenges are a fun distraction and give you the chance to test equipment you haven't found in the campaign yet.

[Note to our readers: On August 6, IGN US released a review of Dead Cells with unacceptable similarities to someone else's work and was immediately removed. We apologize again; read our press release at this address. This new test was written by a different journalist and respects our editorial standards. Note that this test (and its score) represents only the opinion of the new tester based on his experience with Dead Cells.]

But what is Dead Cells? The most fashionable way to label it would be to use the term "metroidvania" again, so as to place it alongside that crowd of two-dimensional action games, among which titles such as Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, Super Metroid and the most recent Ori And the Blind Forest stand out. and Shadow Complex. Games that resume the classic two-dimensional gameplay with hero who jumps and kills enemies here and combining it with a not really linear exploration of more or less large maps, perhaps seasoning everything with a healthy growth of our character.

Here, Dead Cells does all this and even a little more, but it allows itself to do it in its own way, taking practically all the elements that distinguish the genre and mixing them to create a good new flavor. Before him the game that had best attempted this kind of operation was the valid and fun Rogue Legacy (which of course I invite you to recover, this too has been published practically everywhere).

In Dead Cells there is a gloomy medieval world in which some kind of plague called Malaise has obscured the sky, corrupted men and made people particularly unbearable. All problems that the nameless protagonist has not worried about for a long time, since he is dead and headless, thrown into a damp cell to rot. But here is a sticky mixture of green slime and lights is sent to the cell, slips into the poor man's body and brings him back to life, providing him with a stylish "Eye of Sauron" style light globe (but much less bad) .

Here we come into play, impersonating this super-unfortunate devoid of head and memory who finds himself exploring a not particularly friendly world: after the first steps we will meet creatures of all kinds eager to send us back to the world of the dead. Fortunately someone has to love us because in the cell he made us have an old rusty sword, a piece of wood to be used as a shield and the bow that we used when we were dressing up as an Indian (I wrote "well", not "very well" ). By choosing two of these three useful tools to take with us we will therefore increase our faint hopes of survival, since not without amazement we will immediately discover that mister SenzaTesta is a really efficient death machine. He knows how to fight, jump, dodge, archery and even withstand a good number of shots before returning to the body. Maybe there is something from his past that we don't know? You can bet on it and it is precisely on this that the ephemeral plot of Dead Cells rests, decidedly banalotta but topped with a delicious dose of black humor that is served from time to time (and of which I will not reveal anything else, rest assured).

Roguelikes are great for both their developers and their players. Because some deliver content through random levels that they could never cobble together by hand. The others are surprised every time the game is played. However, such titles can quickly appear very arbitrary - there is largely an algorithm behind them.

But what if you give the random principle a structure? Curtain up for Dead Cells, who mixes the procedural levels with a dash of Metroidvania and wants to combine the best of both worlds. The result is a successful mix that also inherits the weaknesses of the role models.

A lump alone on the island

In Dead Cells we take on a slimy lump that ends up in the dungeon and slips into a body lying around. Why, we don't know that at first because our hero doesn't speak. For this, the figure gestures violently at every opportunity and thus makes one or the other laugh. In fact, Dead Cells has an interesting but playfully unimportant story about a kingdom on a living island.

Because the island pulsates and breathes, it always changes its structure. For us this means: We jump, run and fight our way through a total of 17 areas such as the prison or later a cemetery or a clock tower. As soon as we hand over the spoon, we end up in the dungeon at the very beginning and the levels are "diced again" - just like in a Roguelike. The Metroidvania portion comes from a simple trick.

Unique locations change position within the level, but always remain in the same area. There are therefore fixed routes through the island, which we are gradually uncovering with permanent items.

An example: We always start in the "prisoners' accommodation". From here we can go to the "Promenade of the Damned". There we find the tendril rune (allows plants that can be climbed to grow in certain places), which we use in the first level to pave our way into the "toxic sewage system".

A lump against everyone

Keyword way: This is not for the faint of heart. Because up to the last of the only four boss opponents we chop through heaps of monsters and die a thousand deaths. From normal zombie to archers to small ninja fighters, everything is on board.

Each opponent has special skills. For example, the enemy grenadier throws luminous balls at us through massive walls. It's not a problem individually, but in conjunction with other critters, we have to use all our skills to avoid the bombs.

We use two slots for direct attacks, on which we put melee and ranged weapons, and two for special items, such as a self-shot system or traps that increase the damage we cause.

This plays pleasantly brisk, since our hero obsessed with the lump runs nimbly and the blows give great visual and acoustic feedback. A hammer makes a lot of hums, a lance blows through the air, and a crossbow bangs properly as the enemies break apart.

In addition, all pieces of equipment have their advantages and disadvantages, which encourages experimentation. For example, it can be worthwhile to use a weak melee attack that freezes the opponents for a short time - which gives us time to distance ourselves again and use the bow. In general, the game with the low cooldown times of the special weapons motivates us to use them constantly, which makes the fights pleasantly varied.

A lump and its tools

The game hides all these weapons and blueprints for new argumentation enhancers indiscriminately in the areas. So what we find depends largely on chance . At least at the beginning. After each level, we end up in an intermediate zone, in which we can buy permanent improvements and build new swords and bows using the diagrams - which we may find in the levels in the next round.

At the beginning we have no healing potion. We unlock it at the so-called collector (a bizarre robot retailer) in the zone and treat ourselves in the future. We also use gold here to ensure that we get better equipment than the standard stuff every time we restart. However, we cannot determine certain weapons, so a bit of chance remains.

We pay permanent improvements (which generally increase the quality of the items found) with cells that we find, like gold for defeated opponents, in chests or in time doors. The latter are a kind of challenge.

A goal in the second area "Promenade der Verdammten" closes after two minutes of play. This promotes a risky game style - because the rewards behind the door are worth it, new schemes and cells are waving. But be careful: if we die before the next saving zone, all objects will disappear.

With death, we also lose the general upgrades for brutality (melee), tactics (ranged) and survival (shield and dodge). We find them as scrolls in the levels and have to decide for each find on which of the areas we apply them. So we can concentrate on long-range combat in one round, but in full contact in the next.

A lump and its weaknesses

By merging Roguelike and Metroidvania, Dead Cells masterfully combines the advantages of the genres. Because we die often, we have to go through the same levels again and again. But because they are constantly changing, it does not turn into blunt processing.

Conversely, the world does not appear completely arbitrary, since nodes and connections always remain the same. The character development also finds a healthy balance, even if some runs can get frustrating due to gun bad luck. We are still willing to go again and again. Because the next upgrade is already waiting!

But even the Roguelike bonds cannot hide after a few hours that we always walk through the same areas . Knowing what is waiting for us in the levels doesn't make it any better - on the contrary. After over ten hours, every restart feels like backtracking, and every walk through the beginning areas becomes annoying due to the structure being thrown through. You never know where to go.

Until then you have a lot of fun with Dead Cells and because of the fluid battles and the motivating upgrade spiral, the next run will attract you sooner or later.