Like all good humans I seemingly hold many contrary opinions which, thanks to me putting them on the Internet for all to see, I’m routinely forced to come face to face with. Today’s cognitive dissonance comes to me via my growing disdain for intense games, ones that typically require split second decisions, timing and precision in order to complete their various challenges. I make this distinct from difficulty as there’s many games that can be challenging or difficult but they’re nowhere near as intense as say the original DOOM reboots. But here I find myself staring down yet another riff on the Vampire Survivors (nee: Bullet Hell, kinda…sorta) genre which, ostensibly, can be just as intense as anything else. Come with me as I mull this notion over whilst trying to also review Megabonk, a meme/brainrot filled spamfest like few others out there.
Megabonk stays true to the genre tropes for the most part: you walk around whilst enemies make a beeline for you, your weapon wears them down, they drop experience/currency, you level up, explore more, find unlocks, rinse and repeat. Megabonk differentiates itself from most titles I’ve played in this genre in being fully 3D, putting you in a wide open procedurally generated low-poly world that hides all sorts of collectibles, power ups and things to increase the challenge. The game will increase the challenge gradually over time and after a certain period of time will send an ever increasing final wave at you to test just how broken your build really is. There’s also a permanent progression system that allows you to unlock more weapons, characters and buffs to make your life just that fraction easier. For those who love this kind of challenge it’s got all the right building blocks to keep you engaged for as long as you’ll have it.
Visually Megabonk has crafted to feel like something that got spat out of a weekend game jam with all its low poly enemies, environments and effects. Everything feels like what a 3D version of original NES titles would look like: blocky, simply textured and with extremely low frame rates on the animation. This simplicity is deliberate of course, given just how insane the game gets when it starts endlessly spawning enemies on you which are only made worse by the countless numbers of projectiles, effects and other shenanigans you can get up to which puts the game engine under not-so-insignificant strain. I’m glad to report that even at its pinnacle of insanity I didn’t see a hint of slowdown showing that the game is well optimised for what it’s trying to do.
The main game loop is satisfying enough with the usual lull in the first few minutes seeming to drag on before you rapidly start to ramp up in power and the enemies begin numbering in the hundreds. Like all games it can be hard to judge what weapons and combos are powerful initially and you won’t be able to get really broken until you’ve got at least a dozen or so runs under your belt to get some of the key permanent upgrades. Still it doesn’t seem too hard to stumble onto viable builds that will get you through at least the first level, something which I managed to do on my…second playthrough I think. From there you’ll be able to start working out which build elements work best for you and start building from there.
The procedurally generated environments are not exactly easy to navigate, what with most areas looking basically the same no matter which way you look. For a game that’s as intense as it is there’s not much time to stop and orient yourself so you can often feel like you’re going in circles. Trying to find specific objectives can be a bit of a chore too, even if there are some clues for certain things like boss gates (although it can be rather hard to pick out those lines from all the other stuff on screen at any one point). The minimap isn’t the biggest help here either, given it doesn’t show much in the way of terrain information. All this being said though I was usually able to navigate my way through everything well enough, even if I didn’t quite enjoy it as some of the slower moving characters.
Probably my biggest gripe though is the rather sharp uptick in difficulty that seems to happen when your build has run its course. What it breaks down to is that there always seems to be some kind of inflection point where your build turns from serviceable to unviable and that tends to happen over the course of about 10 seconds. You’ll know it when it happens: suddenly you go from clearing wave after wave of enemies with relative ease until suddenly you’re unable to clear enough in time before the next wave arrives. From there you’ll quickly be overwhelmed, bounced around the map a couple times and then that’s it, run over. Most other games in the genre do a better job of gradually chipping away at you until the run ends so Megabonk’s approach of mincing you at a certain point feels a lot more sudden. It certainly makes signing up for another run a bit more challenging.
This is my rather long-winded way of saying that, whilst I definitely enjoyed Megabonk, it didn’t seem to get its hooks into me like other similar games have done so recently. Usually after a couple hours I’ve got a good feel for the mechanics, a couple crutch abilities I know I can rely on to get me through and a general sense of how viable a build will be just by looking at the stats. I didn’t get that with Megabonk and, try as I might to keep going, I didn’t really feel a compelling urge to go back. Now I know I’m probably in the minority here and I’m not trying to detract from other’s experiences, just saying that for the reasons outlined above I just didn’t develop my usual crackhead level addiction.
Megabonk is a competent survival roguelike, one that’s got all the ingredients needed to keep RNG chasers busy for hours on end. For this old gamer though, for the reasons outlined above, it just didn’t resonate in the way similar titles have in the past. I wanted to like it a lot more, truly I did, but it just failed to get its hooks into me. If it ever gets multiplayer or some good mods come out I can see myself coming back to it but for now it’ll have to sit on the shelf.
Rating: 7.5/10
Megabonk is available on PC and Android right now for $14.50. Game was played on the PC with a total of 3.1 hours playtime and 27% of the achievements unlocked.
