It’s funny how art imitates life so closely sometimes, even if unintentionally. In the case of Not a Hero, developer Roll7 must’ve had some kind of crystal ball to the future of what the U.S. political landscape (not to mention Europe with the whole Brexit situation), and known that wackadoos like Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders and Gary Johnson would not only run for president, but also somehow become legitimate candidates people would actually vote for. As an independent voter myself, with no party allegiances or identity team politics to blindly root for, the choices voters have on both sides of the aisle are pretty horrifying–picking between Trump and Hillary at this point is like choosing between a crap sandwich and a fried turd, because they’re both full of shit–making the game’s central figure Bunnylord seem like even more of a hilariously on point parody of Trump and the smarmy, bull-shitting politicians than he did when the game first hit Steam last year. Now the game has come to PS4 and Xbox One (though for the record I played the PC version), welcoming in a new audience of potential voters. As if this political season couldn’t get any worse…

An anthropomorphic purple rabbit from the future, Bunnylord has traveled back in time to run for mayor. Where does he stand on the issues? Well, he loves drugs and hates kids. He’s also hugely in favor of putting an end to illegal hippo spanking. But for the most part he just wants to uppercut crime in its flaming hairy armpit. So he’s called on Steve, his campaign manager, best pal, and a trained assassin, to go all Suicide Squad on the city’s criminal underworld by assembling a crew of fellow anti-heroes to clean up the streets as a means to attract voters and win the election. Yup, it does kind of sound like something ‘The Donald’ might do.

Bunnylord’s election scheme spans 21 missions, each consisting of a primary objective as well as three side challenges. Some of the objectives are commonplace, like raiding a Russian mob warehouse, rescuing hostages, putting up posters to raise voter awareness, or chasing down an investigator carrying incriminating evidence. Others are a little more offbeat, like reclaiming stolen cakes to give to a school for horrible children, or rescuing dogs before they can be turned into tasty dog sushi. Completing more objectives increases approval rating, leading to new playable character unlocks while also determining which of four elected offices Bunnylord claims at the end of the campaign, from Mayor of England at the low end to Global MegaLord for completing all objectives and challenges.

Each mission begins with a dreadful intense power point presentation outlining the task ahead. If you’re successful at killing bad guys right in the face, Bunnylord will pick you up in his van or helicopter at the stage’s exit and take you out to Aunt Ruby’s cafe for a debrief while sucking down naughty delicious milkshakes and maybe even playing a diabolically charming game of poke the banana. I don’t know what that is exactly, but it sounds straight saucy amazeballs.

Okay, enough of the jibber-jabber. Why am I speaking in suck weird phraseology? To give you an idea of the sort of comedic dialogue Not a Hero deploys to get a laugh. Seriously, Bunnylord speaks as if his speechwriter just fed a bunch of random words into a MadLibs script. Even upon replaying missions, the dialogue is randomized so you can never predict just what in the hell will come out of Bunnylord’s mouth next. Some of the lines hit, others smack of forced humor. I imagine it won’t be everyone’s cup of tea, but the writing is unpredictable and consistently outlandish and funny more often than not. The main drawback to the delivery is how slow and choppy the text speed is, as if the randomization algorithm behind the phrasing has to pause to load after every few words. There is an element of comedic timing to it, but before long you begin to wish you could hit a button to quick load all of the text to read at your own pace instead of having to wait as it’s slowly typed in.

Conversely, Not a Hero‘s gameplay is anything but slow and choppy. This is an intense, violent, stylish, challenging, quickly paced run-and-gun shooter, with ISO-Slant technology introducing an extra quarter of a dimension to power the game’s unique quick-snap cover mechanic. With the tap of a button, your chosen assassin will slide or roll into the nearest cover point, fading into the background to denote that the player character is out of harms way. The slide mechanic also adds fluidity and trick-like flair to the action, empowering you to quickly cover long distances and even slide tackle enemies into a temporary prone position vulnerable to one-hit executions. The cover mechanic at times can feel a bit sticky or imprecise, causing you to overshoot a hiding spot or accidentally drop out of cover while under fire. But for the most part the controls are tight and snappy in their response.

Not a Hero isn’t some brainless shoot ’em up though; tactics, reflexes, and fast-twitch skill are a must. The side-view maps allow you to see a slice of the surrounding environment so you can scope out adjacent rooms and form a plan of attack before crashing through doors guns blazing. However, trigger points that spawn in unseen enemies become more and more common, so you always have to be on your toes and keep your trigger finger itchy. The spray and pray method can be useful in spots, but as enemies converge from both sides, ducking in and out of cover as they approach, it’s better to stop and pop, spacing out gunfire so that every shot counts. Maintaining a constant awareness of ammo capacity is crucial, because expending a clip and having to stop to reload at the wrong moment almost always leads to death. Health works on a timer based recharge system whereby lost life bars will refill if you’re able to stay out of harm’s way for a short duration without taking any additional damage. Sometimes it’s smart to flee until health is restored before reengaging the enemy.

The eclectic–and eccentric–cast of playable characters adds tremendous variety to the gameplay, as well as greater replay incentive. Each not-a-hero has distinct animation, locomotion, weapon type, shooting style, and usually some form of special trait to go along with a stereotypical personality or accent. Mike has a deadly shotgun and can perform silent stealth executions, but he can only fire two shots before having to reload. Jesus is fast, has a high rate of fire, and can shoot while sliding. Samantha can shoot and reload while running whereas those actions force other characters to stand in place. Clive’s packing twin pistols that can be fired simultaneously in both directions. Caught somewhere between wanting to be Captain America and Thor, Ronald Justice wields an insta-kill hammer with limited uses that need to be refilled be performing executions. Eventually you’ll find a preferred character that suits your play style and skillset, but it definitely helps to play the field, because certain characters have abilities that are better suited for certain level layouts or objectives, especially if you plan on ascending to the office of Global MegaLord by completing all secondary challenges.

One potential point of contention for some players will surely be the lack of checkpoints. From start to finish on a successful run, the individual levels rarely take longer than a few minutes. However, there is still a lot of dying and retrying that goes into finally completing a mission, and no matter where you die–even if it’s right in front of the escape vehicle–you have to start the whole level over again from scratch, secondary objectives and all. This isn’t much trouble early on, but later on when you start facing off against samurai and ninja enemies that kill in a single hit, and as endless SWAT team assaults become more prevalent during the final escape phase of missions, it can get pretty damn frustrating to progress through a level only to get caught off guard by an unforeseen event or make one small mistake and have to do it all again. Impatience inevitably kicks in, and you begin to rush and try to brute force through areas you’re tired of replaying, leading to more failed attempts. As the difficulty ramps up, there is quite a bit of trial and error that goes into memorizing the map layouts and enemy spawn trigger points before you’re likely to succeed.

While the game debuted last year on PC, Roll7 has this year launched the game’s first DLC, the Me, Myself & Bunnylord mini-campaign, which is sold separately for $2.99 or comes included with some other digital extras as part of the Global MegaLord Edition. The DLC only offers three new levels, but the maps are a little larger than those in the main game, new enemies such as teleporting foxes in black suits and the Killinator make an appearance, and most importantly of all, you finally get to play as Bunnylord himself, who’s armed with an AK-47 and a carrot dagger (actually it’s a turnip painted orange, because carrots are too bendy). Each level has the same structure of one mandatory objective and three optional challenges. Accomplishing everything provides up to another couple of hours of gameplay. So no, the DLC’s not particularly expansive, but the extra gameplay is worthwhile for only a few bucks.

A challenging, quick die and retry 2D shooter, Not a Hero settles into a satisfying gameplay groove that’s somewhere between Hotline Miami and OlliOlli, with an obsessive overuse of adverbs and adjectives, over the top, gushy-sounding pixel art gore, and a heavy handed dollop of puerile humor on top for maximum absurdity. So forget Trump and Hillary–cast your vote for Bunnylord this election season, and come join his Fun Club of murder and mayhem.

Pros:
+ Fun balance of run-and-gun action and cover-based shootouts
+ Great variety of objectives and playable characters
+ Challenging secondary objectives add replay value
+ Satisfyingly over the top pixel art violence
+ Absurd, Mad Libs-style randomized dialogue text

Cons:
– Lack of checkpoints can get frustrating
– Slow text dialogue speed
– Humor sometimes feels too forced

Game Info:
Platform: Reviewed on PC, also on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One
Publisher: Devolver Digital
Developer: Roll7
Release Date: PC – 5/14/2015; PS4 – 2/2/1016; Xbox One – 5/24/2016; DLC – 7/18/2016
Genre: Action
ESRB Rating: Mature
Players: 1

Source: Review code provided by publisher. DLC purchased by reviewer.

Buy From: Steam, GOG.com, Humble Store, PlayStation Store, or Xbox Store for $12.99

Ahead of the game’s May 7th launch, Roll7 and Devolver Digital have released a playable demo consisting of four levels and opened pre-orders for the PC version of ISO-Slant 2¼D cover-based indie shooter Not a Hero. Check ’em both out right now on Steam.

Two editions are available to pre-purchase at a 10% early adopter discount. The standard edition is $11.69 (down from $12.99 full price). And there is a Global MegaLord Edition for $17.99 ($19.99 at full price), which includes digital extras like an art book, soundtrack, behind the scenes documentary, and a set of desktop wallpapers, sounds and icons.

As an added bonus, all pre-orders come with a free download of Roll7’s rad skateboarding game OlliOlli. You can’t beat that deal with a stick.

In case you forgot, OlliOlli developer Roll7 has another new game coming out this year that doesn’t have anything to do with kickflips and rail grinds. That game, Not A Hero, is a blood-filled 2 1/4D cover-based pixel art shooter about a team of assassins working to eradicate the city’s criminal underworld. Their boss is the infamous Bunnylord, an anthropomorphic rabbit running to become mayor.

Campaign season has officially begun leading up to Not A Hero‘s PC launch date of May 7th. (It’ll be on Steam, GOG, and Humble Store.) Citizens of PlayStation Nation will have to wait a little longer to cast their votes, as the PS4 and Vita versions aren’t scheduled to open elections until later in the year.

To learn more about Bunnylord’s stance on the important issues–because we all need to know exactly where he stands on the weaponization of cuddly animals–visit his new campaign website at www.notahe.ro and watch his political campaign ad below.

He seems like kind of a psychopath, but Mayor Bunnylord sure does have a nice ring to it, doesn’t it? So don’t delay–go VoteBunnyLord today!

Skateboarding games haven’t been relevant in quite a long while. EA did some interesting things with the Skate games, but the series never really went anywhere special and flamed out after three quick releases (four if you want to include the spin-off for iOS and Nintendo platforms). And, of course, we all know how aggressively Activision hammered the Tony Hawk franchise into the ground, until it face planted into the curbside after one last desperate grab for the shifting spotlight in that game that came with the skateboard controller, the name of which has been expunged from my memory. The Pro Skater HD remake was a nostalgic return to form, as well as a stark reminder of the franchise’s painful fall from grace.

Indeed, as technology has improved skateboarding games have, in my opinion, only gotten worse. Having huge open worlds, realistic physics and intricate control schemes sounds great in theory, but the truth is the Tony Hawk games peaked with Pro Skater 2, before the developers tried too hard to innovate the game for the sake of innovation. Skateboarding games perform best when they are simple and focused, emphasizing skill-based tricking and high-score grinding above all else. That’s exactly what OlliOlli delivers.

Roll7’s pixelated indie skateboarding side-scroller, which first kickflipped onto the Vita at the beginning of the year, is now out on Steam (and will be coming to PlayStation consoles soon enough). Having spent at least a dozen hours with the Vita version and another half-dozen so far playing on PC, I’ve reached the conclusion that this game is insanely addictive. Not to mention punishingly difficult–at least until you grasp the nuances of the trick system.

OlliOlli is all about the purity of the trick, and the skill it takes to string spins, board flips and grinds together into gnarly, leaderboard-topping combos. Across 25 smallish 2D maps that only take maybe a minute or two to complete from start to finish, the main objective is to reach the cheering crowd at the end of each run without wrecking. Tricking out to post a respectable high score to the global online leaderboards is really just gravy on top of the mashed potatoes. You can hit a button to push and gain speed, but otherwise forward movement is automatic and constant, the only way to slow down being to land a trick poorly. As your skater rolls forward and approaches railings or obstacles like stairs or grassy breaks in the pavement, tricks are performed by holding down a direction on the left analog stick (or WASD keys when using keyboard controls, which work well enough but don’t offer the smooth 360-degree motion of an analog stick) and then releasing. Trick complexity and difficulty is determined based on the direction from which the analog stick is loaded and rotated before release. Simply pulling the stick back in a straight line in one of the four cardinal directions performs basic jumps like ollies and kickflips. From there the analog stick can be pulled back and rotated in quarter-, half- and full-circle movements to do shove-its, hardflips, laserflips, impossibles and a wide range of other aerial board moves. Grinds are performed in similar fashion — the type of grind changes based on the direction pressed when hitting a rail — while the shoulder buttons can be held down to modify grinds or put a spin modifier on board tricks, increasing potential point output.

The trick system isn’t overly complicated to learn, but an in-game reference guide called the Tricktionary is available to call up at any time should you need to know the exact stick movements for performing each trick. In fact, the tricky thing about OlliOlli isn’t the act of tricking alone, it’s the landing. Normally in skating games as long as your skater has finished rotating, the board has stopped flipping, or a board grab has been let go, you will land safely back to the ground. In OlliOlli, you not only have to perform the inputs to pull off a trick or series of tricks, you also have to “bank” the trick by hitting a button to land. Landings are rated on a scale similar to that of a rhythm game. Pressing the land button while still way off the ground results in an “OK” rating, a rating of “Sick” falls somewhere in the middle, and a “Perfect” score is awarded for timing the landing just before the board comes into contact with the ground. This amplifies the risk/reward factor and distinguishes the amateurs from the kings of the leaderboard, as better timing equates to banking more points from the preceding combo. And of course, late timing will result in a “Sloppy” landing, completely nullifying that spectacular combo you just worked so hard to pull off.

I won’t lie, the learning curve required to become comfortable with the landing mechanic as well as the fast, twitch stick movements required to trick in and out of grinds can be pretty harsh, but like real skateboarding when you faceplant into the pavement, you pick yourself up, dust yourself off, throw caution to the wind and try again until the run is nailed. To me, the learning curve only made mastering the mechanics and scoring rad combos later on that much sweeter since I had endured the bumps and bruises of frequent crashes and came out better for it on the other side. The ability to hit a button and instantaneously restart levels also lowers the frustration of the “die and retry” cycle that inevitably sets in as the courses become more challenging.

Beyond the somewhat daunting initial difficulty hurdle, the only other thing harshing this game’s mellow is a lack of optimization. I’ve encountered bugs and performance issues while playing on both PC and Vita. Thankfully, the more serious technical woes have been addressed, such as regular crashes on Vita, as well as a particularly frightening launch day bug in the Steam version that was wiping saved progress for some players, including yours truly. In my first PC session I got hooked into clearing three quarters of the career maps (all that practice on the Vita clearly paid off!), but when I quit the game and came back later all of that progress was gone as if I had never even booted the game before. That was a total bummer. While the developers were quick to squash that particularly bug, I continue to experience a number of little performance hits in the PC version. On top of a few crashes, the game will sometimes temporarily freeze while cycling through the level select menu or when accessing leaderboards. On other occasions, instead of proceeding to the post-run score menu, the game will get stuck on the scene of the cheering crowd at the end of a level while the audio stutters like music playing from a scratched CD. When this happens I can usually still pause the game and quit back to the level select, but it just feels janky.

OlliOlli could use some beefing up in terms of content — a level editor with Steam Workshop integration certainly would have been awesome — however what’s here is more than enough to keep you 360 bigspinning for a long time to come. (The Vita version’s been a mainstay in my portable gaming library since it came out in January, and yet I’m just as addicted to replaying on Steam now as I was months ago.) Just clearing the 25 maps in career mode, which shouldn’t take most players any longer than a few hours, is only the first challenge to overcome. Each stage has a unique set of five bonus objectives to complete. Some of these are basic things like achieving a total high score for the entire level or above a specified score in a single combo. Others are more complicated, such as gapping a specific section of a map, picking up a series of collectibles before crossing the finish line, or completing a stage without a sloppy landing or performing a trick below a certain point threshold. Clearing all five objectives on a stage subsequently unlocks a Pro difficulty run with a new set of challenges, and by completing all of those a Rad difficulty mode becomes available to put your tricking skills to the absolute test by not allowing anything but perfect landings. Oh yeah, it’s brutal.

Additional replay is offered by Spots and Daily Grinds. Each stage can be toggled to Spots mode, in which the objective switches to achieving the highest score possible within a single combo. Your score is tabulated the second you land, even if the only trick you do is an ollie right out of the gates, so the challenge is to find a grind line that allows for a long run. Daily Grinds follow the same rules as Spots, only they are presented in a more directly competitive environment. Daily Grinds can be practiced an unlimited number of times, but once you attempt a run for keeps, you only get the one chance to post a score for that 24-hour period. Even though there is no reward for topping the charts beyond bragging rights, the do or die intensity really ratchets up the pressure. Even the way the music shifts in tone and volume makes you constantly aware that any misstep will result in leaderboard shame.

I can see OlliOlli not “clicking” for some players right away, but after an initial practice period spent grasping the nuances of the twitchy trick controls and the timing of the landing mechanic the intensely difficult and surprisingly elegant skill-based gameplay really begins to shine. While I would say that the small levels and quick spurt nature of the game’s design are ideally suited to the mobile Vita environment, the way short five to ten minute runs tend to explode into hour-long sessions means playing at home on a PC is just as impossibly addictive.

Pros:
+ Skill-based tricking is pure crack addiction
+ Fluid, simple and yet deceptively challenging trick/landing system
+ Daily Grinds add virtually endless replay
+ Rad soundtrack

Cons:
– Expect to faceplant a lot while learning to time landings
– Some bugginess and general performance instability
– Control scheme not particularly well suited for keyboards

Game Info:
Platform: PC/Mac/Linux, PlayStation Vita (also coming soon to PS3 and PS4)
Publisher: Devolver Digital
Developer: Roll7
Release Date: PC – 7/22/2014, Vita – 1/21/2014
Genre: Skateboarding
ESRB Rating: Everyone
Players: 1
Source: Review codes provided by publisher

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First launched earlier in the year on PlayStation Vita, Roll7’s indie sensation OlliOlli is set to land a 720 laserflip nosegrind of skateboarding game awesomeness on Steam next week. The Devolver Digital published PC/Mac/Linux version goes on sale July 22nd for $12.99.

From the Steam store page, these are the features PC fingerboarders have to look forward to:

– Quad Modal: Four Game Modes – Career, Spots, Daily Grind and RAD mode – will have you grinding for months to come

– Press to Land: Perfect landing and grind mechanic that rewards you for timing tricks to perfection, lock this down and mainline your brain into skateboarding’s rhythm.

– Showboating: Battle online for the number one spot on every mode, squeeze in that one extra trick for world dominance.

– Ride the World: Five different stages, each with their own unique levels and obstacles, grind over JCBs in the junkyard and heelflip over Dinosaurs in Neon!

– Precision Fingering: Over 120 tricks and grinds, from boardslides to nosegrinds and kickflips to impossibles – your digits will never get bored!

– Horizontally Challenged: An astounding 250 unique and cunning challenges, honing your skills, pushing you harder and harder – will you step up?

– Silverware: Capture various gold, silver, and bronze to put on your digital mantlepiece for ultimate bragging rights.

– Muzak: Sick hand-picked soundtrack including the Qemists, Dorian Concept and Flako. Who’d have thought jazz and skateboarding would go so damn well together?

Here are screenshots from OlliOlli‘s big screen Steam debut:

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