Mortal Shell December PSPLUS Game Review _Buy_ Wait for Sale_ Never Touch

 [Music] [Music] if that's not the truth hamlet once said to shuffle off this mortal coil was to unburden ourselves of the carried or abandoned toils of everyday suffering with mortal shell you're pretty much  doing the opposite you're running around as a little flesh sack in your fantasy invasion of the body snatching the shells or classes of various other characters in the game as you play a slightly dark souls slightly well dark souls style of game it's a

third person action rpg and it's from cold symmetry and published by playstack this will be for 29.99 and it's coming exclusively for the epic store on the

18th let's check it out as always if you like the video i would love for you to subscribe it absolutely helps the channel hit the notification all for everything when it comes to videos from me and fighting cowboy another youtuber who does excellent videos on this kind of stuff is doing a bunch of youtube videos on this game so if you get a chance check him out graphics are first so mortal shell it really aims to do what it can with what it has while locations aren't exactly sprawling in their size their design is really well done for instance you might battle out with a sub boss while keeping an

eye on their sword you're noticing that behind them there's some bushes in asmall cave that might lead to a shortcut or some other new location the game has a wicker work of those throughout the devs have openly proclaimed their love for demon souls and dark souls and you are not going to miss it it is almost

painfully close to the original game in some of its design and in particular it's architecture and evil feel that doesn't mean it doesn't have its own character it does it's just that with a couple games in a series to compete with there's always going to be a couple rare moments where

you look at it and think hey this looks brand new but most of those moments will be like this looks a little bit familiar luckily enough even though that all happens there are some amazingly well made locations here mortal shell is encrusted with grime and grease andnastiness imagine if games could shower

 and well one never did that'd be mortal shell from the tight candlelit chambers to the bogs understanding the constraints against the title and what they did i think it's a pretty damn magnificent series of locations overall there's the bog standard middle section of the game where you're running through

tunnels with various sarcophagi strategically placed here and there to choke you out on battle points which i didn't necessarily love but it's offset by a starting location i adored and later locations that were really interesting to me for example one time you come down to this fog choked valley and you jog around a bin and you can hear this not necessarily harmonious music flitting down from a hill nearby you walk up to a camp and you see some dude wearing an old sack over his head laying hands down on a loot like a pox village jimmy page and it can cause you to stop for a second and just listen and look or

later flinting through this bog creeping way too loudly for your own good as you try to sneak up on archers that by the way seem painfully outfitted with esp upgrades from friggin x-men no lie those dudes they don't do a ton of damage but an arrow zinging off your dome in the middle of a fight can stagger you and turns an amazing looking battle into a disaster or at the very least makes you look like a goddamned idiot you stumble around as the arrow bounces into

the bushes and each one of those locations has a little hiding places it all feels very well designed even the animation when you're pacific riming for zombies straight into your first shell and your spirit grabs the head of the dead body injecting your spirit into the shell and bringing it to life i

also like the shell designs themselves for instance there's one particular one  adore it's got a yellow and silver look to the armor that's alternating on one of the arms and it just has a slightly offset look a little bit mausoleum chic if you will we have so many games in this genre so many titles that get condensed into the same exact comparison oh it's dark souls this it's dark souls that these developers basically looked at dark souls and demon

souls and said that's okay with us we just want to offer our own bent to it and i think overall they nailed that what they didn't nail so much is a couple of the technical or gameplay idea issues when it comes to graphics and graphical storytelling the first low detail textures those are a lot of places it's not you know cottage cheese vision or glaucoma vision but they're pretty bad enemies just standing there is another one now this is more noticeable than a

lot of games in this genre and could be due to the overall way the landscape is designed or presented but the placements of the enemies is never exactly organic in fact enemy placement is probably one of the most artificial parts about mortal shell that you can feel and no amount of hand waving around is going to remove you watching some gargantuan dude with a spear just bouncing off of a rock trying to hit you while his best friend is slamming down a ten-toed breakfast buffet just right next to him ignoring everything especially in any of the areas where you can see long distances this is noticeable now when it comes to performances and long distances on an i7 at 4.7 with a 2080 ti i was able to get 60 at 4k except for post processing so all the settings work fine post processing is a huge hit here and it's separate from the other graphical steps that you can actually choose and adjust i would say the first thing you want to do is go look at that because i didn't really notice a huge or dramatically impactful setting when i turned that down it was noticeable but it wasn't something that would be absolutely against me wanting to play 60fps in a game like this is really desired too i would say it's one of those things that matters the most so look at that post-processing and maybe some shadow settings additionally boom it's got your render scaling setting you guys know i

absolutely love these they help so much i would say 10 off 4k work really well if you don't want to adjust the post processing and you're at my level of pc

with a 1080 or 1080 ti you can easily get 60 fps at very good settings but again you just want to look at in particular post-processing shadows those kind of thing when it came to a lot of those other settings they were much smaller in their overall effect i would say the game looks really good i like the design but i can see a lot of people thinking it looks pretty familiar and that brings us to sound music and voice the greatest triumph in the universe

gifted and squandered i shan't make the same mistakes as my brother when the momen comes i'll exercise restraint ah first we're going to discuss music

because there's not much to discuss other than some very occasional stingers and maybe one or two really low synths and ambient bits and especially a discordant almost chord that just gets continually played in one or two locations there's not a lot of music here to talk about it is mostly about the sound of the game and that brings us to sound so in a game otherwise marred with a few issues there is one here that blows me away that i don't like in this game

the games in the environment those are great the environmental sounds awesome they mend you into the location they solidify everything around you it feels great especially when you can hear those frogs croaking in the background and some of these locations phenomenal they also add a little bit of processing to make everything feel open and wide a bit of reverb and echo there but the game has an issue in particular with how it informs you of an action and that action is your parry for whatever reason when your parry loads up in this game when you basically have the ability to parry it makes a loud attack sound basically like a shing like a sword being swung or being unleashed and the number of times that went off in the middle of a battle and i was sitting there going oh that means i need to hit because you're so accustomed to pavlov dogging it when it comes to audio effects telling you when something should be done i don't think that's very good design i think that that actual sound could have just been changed to something that was far less battle sounding

because when you're in the middle of a battle with three or four enemies and sometimes using the sound of them grunting or swinging a weapon to realize when you need to pull off a special move and having that sound effect go off it's not really the best design that brings us to voice so this game does have the overall storytelling and the underpinnings and that mix of mystery and overarching ever-present gloom and oppression that we've seen in a lot of games like this but the occasional voices that do play out especially as you unlock bits of the forgotten memories of the shells is really good they are aged they're

 old they're raspy they're well worn and they sound like people who probably fought off creatures with swords and occasionally head-butted somebody then

laid down too weary to really end up fighting anymore and thought they'd sleep it off and go back the next day little used and rarely hurt but when

they are played man those voices are really good they really hit in perfection i loved every one of them and they gave each one of the shells at least to me a little bit of an identity let's be real clear about something mortal shell likes its mystery steeped in a puzzle and then lightly slathered with just a

huge helping of not telling you jack [ __ ] it's not a one two three story at all playing with various shells and unlocking skills and talking to some

scattered npcs  is the main way to get the story as well as the occasional writings in the game world it is non-linear as you could possibly get but it does tell the tale of the land if you follow it which involves some kind of darkness a mystery it's blotted out the land corrupted humans and rotted the

creatures that dot it your job is to work through them and uncover that mystery at the very least uncover a bit about the mystery of yourself and the shells that you can inhabit exploration here is going between level to level to level with a lot of the levels having one or two mini bosses at the very end but just like all dark souls games you can run past some of those and sort of work your way back around you can do all kinds of different map tricks just like we've seen in a lot of these game when it comes to combat this is the expected rolling and dodging and pairing weapon strikes to drop your own as well as a dash or two of something special that maybe we haven't seen before in some of these games the first bit of uniqueness that isn't related to yourweapons or your shell is your ability  to harden with a hit of the button you can quickly turn the stone now this rebounds enemies attacks off you or even

adds a unique pause to your attack and then you can unpause that spell right when the enemy's attack finishes to hit a weak spot that's pretty hard to hit normally it's a very unique mechanic and at first it can actually feel a little bit like a get out of jail free card until you realize it has a reset time and this leaves you unable to do it and relying on your own stamina for dodging or you trusting this ancient relic which allows for you to parry attacks back and if you have the proper amount of resolve which is gained from killing enemies you can not only parry them but you can get in a massive attack of your own and heal some of your health back when it comes to the parry timing i have to say i wasn't exactly in love with i  the animations for some of these creatures sort of inform you others there's a little bit of softness there that i don't think we've seen with other games there was usually something

that i noticed in any of these other game types that i've played where i could sort of pick out where the parry was supposed to happen there was a couple times here where i was like man this is happening later than it should or or earlier than it should you understand it as you sort of face off against different enemies but be aware of that because this can really change up everything harden is a big dealone battle gets three enemies might see you leap in you might jump attack one enemy hit him with a two hit combo then harden as all three swing at once they'll rebound off of you and you sort of roll away then get in another hit then roll out of distance until your hardened ability returns that same battle might have you waiting for each one of those characters trying to draw them out into single attacks with you dropping them into location traps like giant bear traps to hurt them or you

might drop in quick swing combo one of them then parry the first one and resolve perry another get some health back hope that you won't get hit and then interrupt them with harden when they attack and of course all of these strategies are modified by how you get to the location just like games like this there's two three four different paths to get to almost all of the locations and the battles and that can change what you do and the strategies depending

on that or succumb to the random things that can happen in the game for example giant bullfrogs that look like they've been just swallowing dog farts and some kind of crazy poison and they decide to hair carry themselves and explode poisoning you there's a lot of little surprises here now speaking of killing while the game is much like the other titles before it with total death resulting in a checkpoint reset and enemies returning mortal shell has you flesh carrying your way through the game until you get hit out of the shell then you're a sack of bones and you're gonna fly out and it's just one hit kill for your flesh machine at this point if you get any damage at all boom fully dead but you can rush back in and leap back into your shell for one last go that's only one last go per checkpoint and that can mean slightly turning that dynamic on its head as your strategy changes if you're in dark territory on that second borrowed life if you've already jumped into that shell it's game over everything's gonna be set back do i return to the loving arms a spirit sister who offers to secure you for the night or do you push on and if you die it's gonna be one hell of a corpse run like other games in the genre many times

these titles hinge on excellent level design to give you that swiss cheese feeling that you get of spending a weekend in the magic tunnels of some fantasy land just finding shortcuts and quick routes between places you may never have discovered before mortal shell demonstrates a shrewd use of space and level design it's not perfect though it's not as large as some other games of its size reflecting i think that smaller focus and the dev

 team that doesn't mean there aren't some sprawling locations or moments of mystery these games are also seeped in later into the game you come upon a level of just pure what the hellness if you've ever wondered what a city made of onyx and obsidian would look like with weird geometry boom you've got it what first appears to be a straightforward location is actually a level with a really unique challenge of its own and a refreshing difference when it comes to traversal but it works well within the expectations as you move around explore and fight you're also collecting all sorts of items within the game world this is another thing that i really like about what they've done everything in the game is actually practice makes perfect in the past games like this were usually one loop of gameplay you get interspersed with death killing others healing learning the map upgrading and returning back to that normal gameplay

mortal shell leans heavily on mystery to add depth even for the items themselves you're a stranger in a strange land anyway so to find out how some mushroom

works you have to shove it down your gullet and just hope you don't spend the next five hours white hot turd and your breakfast griddle down the back your loincloth every item from mushrooms to musical items to amulets have to all be used multiple times to understand how they work and what they get and when you do them enough you get familiarity which will gain you another bonus you also find effigies as you explore each is a small statue of the shells in the game and allows you to transform into the shell that it represents with their remaining health intact so you can fight an enemy and as long as you have it for a moment you have it i the quick bar you can take a spot while being completely friggin open to attack and change out your shell into another one as you summon it very cool at some point you're pretty much gonna die and you're back to one of the resting locations here usually there's a forge for upgrading the weapons a shrine fo actually well i'm gonna let you guys be surprised by that and a lady leading this entire mystery forward that allows you to upgrade your shell with tar or nectar that you find in the game and as you get each different experience and each different skill you find a little bit more

out about the character there's a couple weapons including a larger broadsword and a hammer and chisel and you can upgrade these with a couple  items you find or buy from the merchant there's mysterious snippets of crumbs that are left out and you're just skippity dew dawn through this cursed twisted trees and forest hansel without your gretel until yo grab one of the shells that you want to be in and kick some butt when it comes to the shells i liked it

because each one made you feel completely different one might have a bunch of durability andno stamina the other might have a ton of stamina and no durability these are things that you normally see in games but with the one with no durability may also have a shadow dodge which is by the way

absolutely incredible but what's not incredible is the difficulty so i didn't know what to expect of this mortal shell is right in the middle it's nowhere near ashard to say bloodborne or even many o the locations that we see in some dark souls games and it doesn't require that sheer level of attention that shakiro did where you balance damage with defense i found it more right stock in the middle which is fine with me each shell offers that different way to play and you can change them if you have that item in your inventory but more important as you level them up and you play to their strengths you don't really have to switch out if you don't want to it's up to you if you want to it also has a basic tutorial which i found was pretty cool because a lot of these games well they just don't but regardless of all that if it's not fun no one's gonna care so that brings us to fun factor i liked it it's really fun it's you're the bad guy from most sam raimi zombie movies the level design isn't really escher-like as surge 2 as i said before or relying on the alice in wonderland rabbit holes we've seen in a lot of games it's just very solid i like the locations i really like some of the enemy designs and i like the fact that there was that tutorial to make you sort of understand at least what some things did but the actual story itself is a real real mystery additionally when you add in that the voice isn't bad at all even though it's not used a bunch everything feels like as i said at the starting they did exactly what they could with what they had it may not have as many secrets or mysteries as some of these bigger games but i don't think every game needs to be identical and at this price it certainly doesn't need to be speaking of price you guys know me i rate games on a buy weight for sale rent or never touch it again rating system this is on epic store as well as the consoles i think it is well worth getting i think this is a title that has a perfect price point it's not too expensive to make you wonder about the length and the playability or replayability it does have some certainly with those different types of shells

and i have to admit i really did like the way some of those guys control there's one or two i may not like and there's not a lot of shells there's only

four but it felt just exactly what i was sort of hoping for additionally the difficulty wasn't completely crushing but it did end up getting super hard on some of the bosses so you had to decide exactly how you're gonna face them i like the idea of switching out the shell in the middle of the battle even though it's very difficult without getting your butt smashed in that just really worked well for me this is a title that was a blast to play it was enjoyable to explore and even when you notice things like the enemies in places where you're like you know what that doesn't really look organic they're just sort of placed there or plopped there i can tell you thousands of times where i've seen that in everything from sakiro to bloodborne to dark souls to surge2 and just because it's happened doesn't mean i don't want it fixed this game hasn't fixed it but what it does is it adds that harden ability which i think is really fun it adds the ability to add in the parries if that's the way you want to play and just overall a very mysterious world from a bunch of people who are obviously fans of dark souls and demon souls and i think did really good fan service for their own title without actually cribbing

everything so anyway that's it for me i hope you guys liked the video if you did give it a thumbs up if you didn't give it a thumbs down check out the microsoft flight sim review i just did as well you'll see more reviews for me in the coming weeks if you want to follow me on itunes and spotify for all the audio versions of the reviews as well as our twice a week podcast check out acg the best gaming podcast it's on spotify and itunes you can also follow me on reddit facebook and twitter and you can become a patron i would love for you to do it it absolutely helps if i've saved you any money or found you a game you absolutely loved and didn't expect to maybe go to the patreon throw five bucks in there join our discord it's a great place or check out teespring and get some swag peace out and enjoy the rest of your week