Crypt of the Serpent King

This is another one that I had to use my American credit to obtain which I did only after it went on sale. Before playing, I took the time to read some reviews and some of them are absolutely scathing. As soon as I dived in I was expecting it to be an absolute pile of garbage. I’m not going to lie, it’s not great but it didn’t deserve some of the ire it generated.

Firstly, it’s a case of you get what you pay for. The game retails at $1.99 so comparing it to likes of Skyrim is unfair. In fact, any major title from an established developer is unfair in terms of comparison and there is some real shit out there retailing at a lot higher prices.

Secondly, it’s a port of an Xbox 360 Indie title so the developers should probably get a little bit of credit for managing to create something so cheaply that has generated as much emotive response as it has.

On to the game itself, it’s a dungeon crawler where you navigate through corridors, collecting keys and hitting enemies with a weapon. Most levels can be cleared with a simple counter attack function where you wait for the enemy to try and hit you, step out of the way, then hit them and repeat. I didn’t know this when I first played so I ran in all guns blazing and got murdered by the fourth or fifth rat-like monster I encountered.

There are seven levels where you fight essentially the same enemy – they just look different. Level 2 is a little different as the keys are surrounded by fire rather than a moat of lava or spikes. A lot of people have complained about the jumping in this game too. I personally didn’t have any issues with it. I think I misjudged one jump but apparently there is a specific way to jump over the lava in level 4 so either the developers patched this out and made it easier or it wasn’t that hard to begin with.

The game has a levelling function and this is where I started to question just what was going on. You can increase three stats; agility, strength and endurance. Of the three, only agility makes any bit of difference to the gameplay so it’s totally pointless. You can also buy weapons, of which only one upgrade is really necessary and the only difference it makes is that you need to hit enemies two or three times instead of three of four times to kill them (except for dungeon bosses.)

The other element that got me was the music. It’s really poorly constructed and not in keeping with what’s going on in the game. There’s an audio cue when a bad guy sees you but this is very selective and I got attacked from behind several times because I wasn’t expecting an enemy to be there. Also, the volume picks up and goes ‘epic’ and loud for literally no reason. This part of the game does feel broken but I didn’t get any of the graphical errors that other gamers experienced.

Achievements – 1,000 Points – 21 Achievements

As I’ve said there’s not a lot to the game so maybe that’s why the achievements are specifically designed to make you play the game three times to get them all. You get an achievement for each level completed on each of the three difficulty levels so once you master the step-in-hit-step-out technique, it’s a doddle, just a bit boring.

Downloadable Content – N/A

The Crypt of the Serpent King is a not a good game. It is underdeveloped and the lack of benefit from stat increases is the worst part of it. That said, it costs $1.99 and you get what you pay for. If you’re expecting it to be masterpiece then you’re expectations are too high.