Surprisingly, City of Brass, brought to us by Uppercut Games and who also worked on Bioshock, is not the game that was originally believed to be something I could really get a grip on. This adventure first person and rogue-lite game has a lot of work to do to keep their crowd’s attention.
Set in an Arabian styled environment that appears very generic to me, City of Brass throws you in as an unnamed thief, as far as I can tell anyway. The goal is to hack, slash and destroy all the enemies that get in your way while avoiding very Indiana Jones style traps that are laced in to the walls and floors. Equipped with a whip and a blade as your only weapons, you must reach the heart of the city to reach the mother of all treasure.
Soon after getting in to the game, I immediately had problems with the hit boxes. It never failed that I would die due to some sort of mistimed attack that should have been a perfectly clear shot. Not only are these an issue but the levels seem ridiculously difficult. I didn’t realize this could be changed somewhat by using the modifiers that allow you to maintain your health. Somehow this seems to make your effort last longer. One of the most frustrating things is the death. Sure, it’s normal but every time you die, you lose everything and must play the whole level again, pick up every treasure again and so on and so forth. This becomes very tedious.
After a pretty short time working my way through the 12 levels that realistically shouldn’t take a super long time to handle, I just got bored. There are leader boards and every level are timed which makes the journey a bit more chaotic and tense, but I wasn’t focused on any of that. I was focused more on the enemies of skeletons that all seemed to have a different ability such as water and fire. They all present a different challenge but in the end it all feels the same after a short time of playing. Along with this, enemies give XP like most games, but it takes forever to level up. By the time the game is almost over, you might be lucky to have leveled twice before getting to the boss. I’m pretty sure this has a lot to do with dying and losing everything over and over.
In City of Brass each level is almost connected. Series of corridors all are intertwined and are supposed to somehow help enhance the plot or gameplay. Since there isn’t a real plot to go along with this adventure, each room started to feel the same. Somehow amid all the chaos, City of Brass did add the ability to use a genie in true Arabian lore, to upgrade weapons and enhance abilities. Sadly, the genie is randomly located somewhere in the levels and upgrading a weapon is great until you die and want to upgrade again. There’s just something missing from this game.
Even though there is a lot of content I could touch on here, the biggest thing besides the gameplay and monotony of City of Brass is the way that the developers have thrown so many abilities, weapons, techniques and upgrades at me. This seems like a jackpot of things to do but when it really boils down, nothing can be used because I never get far enough to activate anything. City of Brass really had potential to be a lot better if the plot were enhanced and if they fix the mechanical failures. More goes in to a game than an interesting background story and a decent background. So, in the end, I was just very disappointed.
4/10
City of Brass is available now on Xbox, PS4, Steam
