Wednesday, 13 April 2016 00:00

Silver Bullet: Prometheus Review

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When I learned that the 3-D top down shooter Silver Bullet: Prometheus had been a mobile game before being ported to the PC, everything made sense: The combat, the interface, the music, and the dialogue. All of these aspects were extremely underwhelming.

The game, created by South Korean developer Byulbram Studios, is messy and unpolished. This, for example, is the introductory section on Steam:

Infiltrate the military research lab consipiring with the devil and hunt down the demons!
Kali, the legendary "Goddess of Death" in the South America Rovolution.
She joined Neverlight, the counter-demon organization, after some kind of incident.
She wield two pistols that carve silver on bullets became a secret agent who hunts down demons.
Kali was investigating a strange case occurred in the Axis-21 Marine Research Plant when she discovers the large and shadowy conspiracy of failed Project Prometheus.

If this gives you pause, it should.

Silver Bullet tasks you with shooting a lot of stuff, having horribly mistranslated conversations with characters that randomly appear and disappear, and trying to figure out just what the hell is going on in the story.

The combat mechanics are childishly simple, yet very frustrating. For example, the game makes you auto-lock on targets. This sounds nice, and the execution is cool to see. Kali shoots in different directions with her pistols named “Ash” and “Dust.” But it’s annoyingly stupid when you want to shoot a different target, or conserve your ammo, or shoot an exploding barrel to do damage against a boss.

There’s also a stealth mechanic which kind of works. You basically crouch down and hit people on the back of the head. Kali can also hide in barrels and move around in them, very much like Snake in Metal Gear Solid.

The boss fights are kind of fun, but get repetitive. Shoot, dodge, hide, dodge, shoot, grenade. One battle is the exception, with a giant cube which you shoot into smaller cubes, but for the most part the boss battles are a pattern of rinse and repeat.

But the main issues for Silver Bullet are that it does not make a lick of sense and its execution leaves much to be desired.

The story, for example, is about cover-ups, demons, zombies, governments, past revolutions and the Vatican.

The mission briefings tell you exactly what is going to happen in the mission. I did not realize this at first. I thought that the briefing was giving me a breakdown of the story, but I quickly caught on to the fact that it was giving me the complete rundown of what to expect. Where is the fun in that? In what game would you want there to be no surprises at all?

On top of that, at the end of every mission, strange choir music pipes in and a lady says “Dust to Dust.” Because, you know, you are fighting demons.

Another issue, and an obvious connection to the fact that this is a mobile port, is that you actually can upgrade your character, but you have to exit to the main screen to do that. Yes, Silver Bullet is a shooter with RPG mechanics, but these mechanics can only be accessed by leaving a play session and heading to the main screen.

Finally, like the introductory breakdown on Steam, almost every conversation has grammatical issues or strange diction. Even the Steam achievements have issues. For example, I ran out of bullets and got an achievement reading “Out of Bullet.”

4

The Verdict

Right now, Silver Bullet: Prometheus is on Steam for $10. Now, ten dollars is not a lot of money, but if I buy a game for $10 I expect a certain amount of polish. I expect the developers to care about their product, which it seems that Byulbram Studios does not. Sure, it runs fine (it is a mobile port). I never had any crashes, the controls always worked, and I never had to reload. But just because something works and can be played does not mean that it should, and Silver Bullet: Prometheus lands squarely in that category. Folks, it is not worth your money.

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Christophe Parker

Christophe Blake Parker is a writer, actor, and teacher living in Oakland, CA. His first real gaming experience was with Everquest and Games Workshop tabletop games such as Warhammer and Warhammer 40k. He is thinking of starting a kickstarter campaign to fund his Steam Wishlist.

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