AGAINST Demo Review: a noir rhythm action game

Joy Way, the indie game studio behind the VR parkour game STRIDE, has just released a free demo of their upcoming game AGAINST (yes, they love capsed names). I just played it and of course, I’m here telling you my first impressions about it!

Gameplay

AGAINST is a game that looks like the union of between Beat Saber and Pistol Whip, with some unique elements put in the mix.

For every level, there is a soundtrack, and you have to kill enemies following the beat of this song. To kill the enemies you have three weapons: a sword, a gun, and a pair of brass knuckles. The enemies have a clear indicator of where you have to hit them, and this indicator becomes red when it is the exact time to kill them. The indicator also shows you how to kill them: in the case of the sword, it shows you the angle through which you have to slice them; for the knuckles, there is a circle that shows where to punch them; for the gun, there is a crosshair where you have to shoot them. The more precisely you hit an enemy (in the right way and at the right time), the more you gain points for a higher final score.

But there’s more. You don’t choose what weapon to grab, but the game gives them to you at exact moments of the level. So in the demo level, you start grabbing a sword, then after you have killed some enemies, you abandon the sword to equip the knuckles, then you leave the knuckles and get the gun, then the sword again, and so on. The enemies come always from the front direction (there is the usual rail like in Beat Saber), but when you have the sword, you are standing in a place and they come towards you, while when you have the gun or the knuckles, the game moves you forward along the street of the city you are in, and you go towards the enemies that are positioned there. This is an evident mix of the static Beat Saber and the always-moving Pistol Whip.

Of course in the game you have also to dodge attacks: some enemies throw stuff at you (and there is an arrow that tells you how you have to dodge the upcoming shot) and when you move forward there are also barriers and other various obstacles (like cars) that you have to avoid.

To add another mechanic to the game, sometimes you also find a couple of arrows in the level: if you punch them with both hands following their direction, you automatically make a jump in the direction that they point: if they go upwards, you make a high jump and go to the roof of a building; if they go sideways, you start walking on the lateral walls like a Kung Fu master. And I can assure you that walking on a lateral wall while shooting enemies that are in the center of the street at the rhythm of the music is cool as hell.

As you may have understood, there are many different mechanics in this game, and luckily there is a long tutorial that explains them to you and let you practice them. Having so many variations is great and terrible at the same time. It’s great because the game feels very frenetic: you don’t always make the same action, but every 30-60 seconds you have to change the way you play the game, embracing a different weapon. Attacking, dodging, taking weapons… all this stuff makes the game very fast in its action… and following the rhythm of the music while doing these actions may let you enter in a wonderful flow state. A flow state where you move and so sweat a lot: this game is fantastic for some cardio fitness. At the same time, though, sometimes I felt a bit confused about what I had to do… especially in the beginning, I had to remember too many things, too many rules, and I got confused and frustrated many times. Maybe having fewer mechanics would have made this game easier to grasp and to be played.

You have 3 lives (3 hearts on the simple UI you have in front of you): every time you hit an obstacle, or an enemy manages to hit you (if you don’t slice the enemies, they attack you and take one of your lives), you lose one life. Every time you make a perfect shot (perfect timing and hit mode), you gain a new life. The goal is to finish the level still alive.

One thing that makes AGAINST different from many competitors is that there is a boss fight: at the end of the demo level, there is a big giant spider that you have to kill, always following the rhythm of the music. It attacks you with one leg and then you see the indicator to slice it, then it goes with the second leg, and so on: basically they kept the same mechanics, but you have to perform them with a single big enemy and not many little ones.

When you die, you have to repeat the level from the beginning, and the level is always the same, with the enemies appearing always at the same time. The trick to win the level is to learn all the enemies’ positions by heart and then performing all the movements just using the memory of the previous tries. Many games like Beat Saber follow exactly this principle, and I have to say that honestly, it is not my piece of cake. Here I’m expressing a very personal opinion: games where I have to repeat the same level again and again and it is always exactly the same, make me feel like if I lived in the Groundhog Day movie and make me frustrated. So after the 10th dead in the Hard Level mode, I wasn’t standing anymore restarting the level from the beginning knowing exactly what was going to happen. Yeah, I’m more of an Unreal Tournament guy. But if you are a fan of rhythm games, this doesn’t hold also for you, and you will probably love how AGAINST unfolds.

In the demo there is only one level, that is proposed in Easy and Hard mode. I won the Easy mode after some trials… taking it easy maybe I needed 15-25 minutes to understand how to play it and win it. The Hard one has more enemies and it is less forgiving, and I have not won it yet.

Graphics

AGAINST has a noir comic book essential style. There are few graphical elements as if everything was sketched, and all the environment and character around you are made with black/grey tones. The style and the colors help in setting a noir mood to the game that is fascinating. It has also a practical advantage: the red indicators that are used to tell you when and where to hit the enemies are clearly visible in a dark world, and this helps you a lot in killing the enemies in the best way possible. The graphical elements are absolutely good, and are one of the most characteristic elements of this game: someone said that it feels like playing inside the movie Sin City, and I agree with that.

After the first trailers were released, the game looked like a splatter one, but honestly, I absolutely had not that impression while playing it: yeah, there is some blood when you slice the enemies, there are bloodstains everywhere, but it’s just a graphical effect and in the fast action of the game you don’t even notice that. It’s much more noticeable in the videos than in VR. And the fact that everything is cartoonish makes the killing not realistic at all. I wouldn’t make a 10 years-old kid play it, but for more mature players, the blood shouldn’t be a problem.

Audio

The sound effects and the music of AGAINST are well-made. Talking about the music, I think that Scott Hayden from Road To VR is absolutely right: it is nice, but not so catchy as the launch songs of Beat Saber. It’s nice playing with it and following its beat, but after one hour I have finished playing the game, I already forgot how the song was. With Beat Saber it’s different, and sometimes I find myself singing its songs in my head. If Joy Way wants to become viral, it needs to find cooler songs.

Talking about shareability, that has been what has made Beat Saber so popular, the dark vibes of AGAINST, the blood, and the complex mechanics don’t make it a great candidate for viral video streaming in my opinion. It looks more like a game fun to be played than one cool to watch and share on a video. I hope to be wrong for the developers.

Comfort

I had no nausea or dizziness while playing this game. Even in the parts where you move forward, the movement is constant and triggers no motion sickness. I think that if you are ultra-sensible to virtual sickness, this can give you problems, but otherwise, it is ok to be played.

Price and release date

The info about price and release date are still unknown. But the game has already a SteamVR page on which you can wishlist it.

Final impressions

From this short preview, I came out satisfied by AGAINST. I loved the fact that the game was frenetic, and made me move a lot in a flow state while killing enemies following the beat. I sweat so much, and as a fan of VR fitness, I was very pleased by it. It is great cardio training.

On the other side, I’ve found its gameplay somewhat confusing at times, and frustrating and repetitive for its mechanics. I know, it is the genre that the developers have chosen that has these characteristics (and that I don’t love), it’s not that the game has been made in the wrong way: so if you like this mechanics, then this should be no problem for you.

The graphical style alone is worth the time of downloading the game, and I’m sure that as soon as you will practice enough with its control scheme you will start having fun with it. A game’s only true purpose is to entertain people, and AGAINST is entertaining and challenging (especially with the Hard mode), so it fulfills perfectly its scope. That’s why I suggest you all download the free demo and give it a try!

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(Header image by Joy Way)